Through Broken Eyes
by StellarRequiem
Summary: A story in Rinzler's words, moving from one moment to another until he commits his final act as himself.
1. I am

I know who I am.

I don't know how I got here.

_Error._

I have _always_ been here. I was born here. Born to stand at my master's side, to kneel at his feet.

Clu is my creator. He has fixed me.

I was once something else: Imperfect.

But no longer.

I am perfect now. The perfect soldier.

I am the vanguard of his onslaught. I am the true enforcer.

I will secure this system, it's perfect warrior.

Whoever I was is gone. I know who I am.

I am Rinzler.


	2. ISOs

My cycle is an extension of myself, and it behaves as such.

I am ripping through the streets, a new order in my head.

_Execute command: locate and detain program._

_Target: Zuse_

It is not a single step command. The mission is ongoing.

Clu is patient. He knows I will succeed in time.

It is the ends that justify the means.

I am shooting up, over, and through the remains of a broken city. The ISO leftovers.

It is blue, a dead blue. It does not glow. Does not know white light any longer.

My cycle is a beacon in it's midst's.

Its engine purrs, low and satisfying, and it cuts the air with its passing. I am content, though it does not interrupt my focus.

This emotion, though, like others, seeps out of me in the form of sound. I can feel it rumbling, unheeded, in my chest.

I do not know why I do this.

I understand that words are predominantly unnecessary. My thoughts are to execute command protocol; they do not require the enforcement of words. Nothing is meaningful enough to justify speech.

But the sound is constant, and does not heed this knowledge. When I am active, it comes.

It is correct, though. Clu left it. It _must_ be correct.

I dismiss the sound because of this. It is extraneous.

I am aware of life nearby. Scans indicate it. A knowing in my code indicates it.

I become silent. A stalking predator.

Cutting through the wreckage, I am slipping now over the arc of metallic code that once formed one of the ISO's prestigious decorative arches.

Bent low on my cycle, I follow the rubble's curvature with my own body, and then I am in flight, accelerating from its surface and into the air.

Careening through space, I am precise.

I land between a group of four ISOs, wide eyed and skittish animals, and a collapsing line of guardsmen. They are failing in their attempts to detain these survivors. This is why I am here.

Slicing around them, I cut off the undesirables' retreat with my light ribbon.

It shimmers, impenetrable. One ISO falls in a misguided attempt to flee. He collides with its surface.

Pieces of him scatter across the dirtied ground. They clatter. They click. The skittering sounds of finality are pleasant.

A rumble rolls up form inside of me, I vibration I feel all the way in my fingers.

I come around again, enclosing them, and then I am drawing myself up into the air, taking my baton and my derezzing cycles with me, as I encounter the light ribbon. I have planned this.

Everything is intact. The cycle is reduced back into the confines of my baton, which is warm in my hand from use.

I am on my feet, rounding on the ISO creatures. The light ribbon is slowly derezzing, but the guard are surrounding them in its place even as it goes.

But one of the ISOs has been upgraded.

She catapults into the air, flips herself over the remainder of the ribbon, and bolts. Spines of flaxen hair, however, betray her location in the relative darkness.

The guards are slow. I am better than they are.

I have already drawn my disc. I only need it as a single unit for this exercise.

She is an undesirable, who will not submit. She will not be of use. There is only one programmed response to this.

_Execute command: kill-9_

Strength is coursing in the circuits of my arm, my shoulder, and my disc cuts through the air with the force of my throw. It is perfect. Deadly.

It cuts through her, through the center of her back. In ribbons of light and chunks of pixel and broken code, she is gone, skittering across the ground as her final cry echoes out through the ruins.

My disc turns in the air, elegant, obedient, returning to its master. My hand takes it from the air without my eyes having to watch its return.

The slow guards collect the prisoners for interrogation. One of them looks at me.

I hear a sound coming up out of my chest at this, and I see that its causes them discomfort of some kind to hear it.

The ISO closes his eyes as if he knows a terrible truth. He looks down, away.

I activate my cycle once again, and leave the incomprehensible betrayal on the outdated creature's face behind. I leave him with the guards. In the dust.

It is where his people belong.

Clu said so.

The ISOs are the ones at fault.

_They_ are the ones who would damage our perfect system.

_They_ are the reason that things are wrong.


	3. Interrogation

"Kneel," says Clu.

The ISO goes to his knees on the unforgiving floor. The guards on his arms bring him down.

Clu is majestic. Clu is all that is in the room. All else is nothing.

He stands, hands folded behind him.

Clu is regal.

Clu is elegant.

Clu is power.

He is ferocity and dogged leadership in its most perfected state.

I am only aggression, the reality of his displeasure as he stands, reserved. The guards are extensions f his hands. _We_ do not make the atmosphere in the room,_ we_ do not inspire the hate in the ISO creatures eyes.

Only Clu inspires this passion.

Clu is calm, he is resigned, he is a disappointed master holding supremacy over the distasteful imperfection of the ISO on the ground.

"I am going to ask you a series of questions," he says.

His voice is warm and washed with darkness.

"About the rogue program called Zuse. . ." he pauses and turns the corner of his lip up. His eyes ignite. Clu is confident in his triumph already.

The ISO slime struggles and gnashes his teeth. Helpless animal. Imperfect plague.

"Oh," Clu is sweet to him, leaning towards the creature, speaking cold-circuit words.

"Yes," he says, "I know who's been helping you. And I'm going to find him. And you," he pauses, always with his smile as he pivots away and absently paces the floor.

His disinterest is flawless. He looms over the ISO, consumes the white walled space.

Interrogation is a bright place. White. Glowing. Brilliant.

Too white. Like something I should recognize. White like the light that envelopes the vision of the dying.

_Alert._

. . . Something is wrong with that statement . . . .

Not quite an error.

But wrong all the same.

I am so deeply flawed, Clu's perfect aggression. When my task is complete, I must run a diagnostic.

I must rectify me.

Or Clu will. He is there, always. Taking my disc. changing. tweaking. Making me perfect again and again. Reaching inside.

_Clu makes me perfect . . ._

"Well," our leader still speaks, though I have been lost in my internalizing, to the ISO prisoner,

"_You_ are going to help me find him."

The ISO has strength. Resists. Says things. Denies Cle. Claims it as betrayal.

He is a futile thing.

Clu shakes his head. Slowly.

Left. Right. Left.

"You don't want to make this harder than it has to be," he sighs. He is saddened. He is disappointed. The ISO dares to fail him.

I step forward from my place behind the ISO with this cue.

Step into his sights.

I am throbbing with my own vibrations as sound pours forth. It is vicious. Vengeful.

This term is old, a user phrase, but I know it is accurate: _There will be blood._ There will. I can hear it in myself.

I am so eager.

I will cut him. I will slice him. I will draw forth pixels of data as single units with the precision and violence of my white and orange lit weapon.

I will be so slow. So exact.

The gashes will pour forth to the cold floor in a torrent of pixels.

And the answers will fall from him as well.

He will cry out. He will shout. He will scream as he meets agony, knows it as I do, knows the pain.

He will bend below my hand. Will know suffering and surrender.

He will confess, confess, confess . . .

_Imperfect creature on the ground, do you hear me?_

I reach for my weapon.

He hears. He knows. He looks into the face of the threat and sees that Clu speaks only truth.

I am Clu's perfect aggression.

The green ISO eyes fill with terror.

_Yes._

I will hurt him. I will send him past the parameters of agony. I will please Clu, and I will break him.

At my hand, he will know redemption.


	4. Disc Check

I feel dizzy.

I feel free.

I feel lost.

Where is my disc?

Clu has it.

fixing.

"Perfect as usual," he mutters, and then there is a cold laugh.

No.

Checking. Not fixing.

I feel panic.

I feel calm.

I see inside of me, can't look outward. Can't focus my eyes.

Something is in there, screaming to get out. To get through.

So vague. So distant.

I feel like running.

I feel threatened.

I feel shame.

_Error:_ why?

I feel tempted . . .

But then my disc returns. It brings the memories of my work.

_Ah, Perfect Rinzler . . ._

Needlessly sadistic Rinzler.

. . . _Why are you so good at what you do?_

The sound of my purring meets the air as I sync.

I feel like myself. My strange self. My contradictory self.

My disc is back. I feel like Rinzler again.

I feel better.


	5. Sleep

Dreams. Unchecked fragments. Dark and forbidden. Memories.

They are flat, grayscale, blurry. They are seen through a veil.

Clu must know. He must know I have them.

But sometimes, he knows also, that I must sleep.

Even perfect programs must, finally, know rest. Upgrades must have a chance to take hold. And it is the upgrades that maintain the flawlessness.

I_ am_ perfect.

What I see in the darkness, though, is not.

It is old. Forgotten.

It comes from deep, deep within.

It comes from what I must have been before. Before Clu made me his faultless warrior.

I do not like before.

In the dream there are ISOs. They speak, but I don't recall the sound. Don't understand the words. I only see.

They are angry, sad.

This is strange; these faces are those of equals. They show program's emotions.

Impossible. Wrong.

They draw close to me. As if for shelter. Why?

Fear is in their animal eyes, in the soft glow of the circuits in their faces where circuits do not belong.

And then the dream changes.

Now there is another. Clu, and yet not Clu. I can't see his face properly.

But he is running. Running away. And I am tumbling, being hurled to the ground.

The memory becomes suddenly black and brings with it the sick of vertigo.

I fall. I am flattened.

I am defeated.

_No . . ._

Am I? Was I?

What did I fight for...?

_No._

It doesn't matter. It is irrelevant.

The dream goes on.

The memory is yellow now, yellow everywhere.

And then there is pain. Exquisite pain.

The footsteps continue to flee. To leave me behind.

It is supposed to be this way...

Suddenly, the pain is greater. It is reaching, crawling,

It comes from my waking self, external and choking. Not of the dream, it saves me from it instead.

_ERROR ERROR ERROR_

Some horrific sound comes out of me as I am forced to a semblance of wakefulness.

It is a breath chopped short. It flies from between my lips audibly.

I cringe from it.

My eyes peel open. The room is dark, but my own circuits seem to scald them.

It hurts me to see. It is all unfiltered.

Where is my helmet?

It has been retracted by sleep, lost to standby mode.

_I must . . . helmet . . . __no. . . Close eyes . . ._

Suddenly: darkness again. Words in my vision even as my body stiffens from the agony.

_Error._

The words keep coming.

_OVERRIDE- restart program: Rinzler._

_Shutting down-_

_Standby achieved: Redirecting-_

_Abort restart. Maintain standby._

_Reestablishing: Retrieving data-memory file._

_Run file._

I am saved by the efficiency of my own system. The splitting instant is over. Quick. As quickly as it started.

All over.

A progress bar shows completion, and the memory returns.

I continue my sleep.

There are footsteps. Footsteps in my dream.

Running away from me. . .

Running from all of us.

It is because of this that all things must now be Clu's.

And it is why I must live, why I must pursue those fleeing sounds and all the corruption they leave in their wake.

Clu's orders.

_It has to be this way . . ._

I sleep.

* * *

Happy chapter five, everyone! Thanks for reading, and special thanks for reviewing!

Now, I have an inquiry for all of you: what aspects of life under Clu do you guys want to see from Rinzler's perspective? While I CAN come up with things on my own, because of its more anecdotal structure this story offers me a lot of room to let you, as readers, have some say; and I'd like to do that. My one stipulation is that you not request specific events, so much as people to encounter or issues on the grid you want to see examined.

Anyway, if anybody has a request, let me know and at some point, I'll try to put it in!

Thanks again!

End of Line.


	6. Return to Games

Defiance was new to me. At least at this level.

The program who barged so unceremoniously into the sanctum of Clu's tower was a warrior. He rode a warrior's cycle. He bore a warrior's batons.

He came from the warriors' games.

A sudden pang of some unwelcome and unidentified emotion had shot through me with his coming. I once knew the games, I am certain. Knew them as my old self.

Somehow, even now, I am not in error as I contemplate this knowledge of my past. Strange. Perhaps it is because I am not trying to remember that I am not in the wrong. I simply accept that the games are an integral part of me.

I, too, am a warrior. This is truth. It is correct.

I latch vigorously onto the knowledge of this new aspect of right and wrong. Rinzler fights. I belong in the games. Thus, I am here. Here for the program.

. . . The program.

He spoke to Clu, shouted, defied him, threatened him.

Wrong.

_But now there will be blood . . ._ this warrior and I. This program called Rezic who wears such emanating green and knows battle as a way of life.

He once fought the betrayer Tron. He told my master this the day he barged in to the chamber of Clu's power, the seat of his rule. Told him as he encroached on his leaders's graces.

He told also that he had once come near to defeating him. Tron. The traitor.

_Tron . . . . . . ._

_ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR_

Brief pain. I should not dwell on this aspect of my assessment.

So I am punished.

Pain comes again . . . I short out, only for a moment.

_Redirecting-_

The pain goes. I make my evaluation. Correctly this time. Efficiently.

Rezic is skilled. _That_ is my only assessment.

Who he has to compare himself with is nothing. This Tron . . . _he_ is nothing.

A betrayer. A forgotten, glitching, alien creation from a disdainful place from long ago. He is a memory. A figment of the unheard prayers of the naive devout. That is all.

I know this.

And yet the name lingers.

I force it back. Defeat it.

I do not want it here.

I focus instead on the fight lingering ahead of me.

My fight with Rezic.

He made a threat on Clu's life. This final game is now his punishment.

At first I had wanted to perform an execution for his insolence.

But that was wrong. Untrue. What I wanted, though wants are so deplorable, though they posses so little meaning, what I _wanted_ . . .

I wanted to _fight_ him.

I wanted to fight him and see him defeated and broken, spilling across the ground.

I _nearly_ fought him, so strong was my desire, at the moment at which he withdrew his disc against Clu. I was carried away.

But even when I subdued myself, disarmed him, it was glorious. Done with a masterful twist, a precise slash against the spinning edge of his weapon that sent it careening away with the sparks of our sparing still heating the air between us . . .

I am eager. Thinking about this. So eager. I am throbbing with energy at the prospect of matching myself against this champion.

This, the defiant one. He is mine to defeat. _In the games_.

He will die at my hand, die before these crying spectators and their useless noise.

The fight pulses, burns in my circuits.

I will make his death glorious.

The games are about to begin.


	7. Combat

We are lifted. The entire floor, glassy and transparent and rippling, rises beneath my feet.

He stands across from me, polarized visor, swallowing blackness, only covering from his nose up.

Rezic's mouth is a hard line.

No, not Rezic. The opponent. That is all he is, this champions of the programs below.

But they are told, now, that this champion will meet his end. The announcement is made. I disregard it. I do not need to heed what I already know: that he is a traitor, a defiant, an undesirable who will now serve as a sacrifice for all futile rebel causes. That he is being matched against the new champion of the grid.

Extraneous, unimportant sound comes up form the crowd. Belief and disbelief, enthusiasm for his death or mine.

They do not know me yet.

Not truly.

But they will.

Clu's perfect Rinzler . . . They will see me soon.

The energy in my circuits is blinding. There is nothing in me but the battle ahead. Nothing.

This is _right. . . _

Sound ripples out of me. The hard mouth of the opponent is worried. He does not like the carnal noise.

Does not understand.

He cannot fathom how deeply my aggression runs, how the satisfaction of delivering my master's will melts so seamless within the confines of my code to the pulsating, throbbing rage in me. He does not see that he enrages me.

Defiant, dangerous creature . . . _He is wrong._

But _I_ am right.

And I will show him this. He will know me. One warrior to another.

He will see me for what I am.

There is a voice, nagging, wanting for my attention. Female and serving only as announcement I do not require to understand that the games have officially begun.

_It is time._

I am patient. He draws his weapon first.

I follow.

He watches me, he is ready. He knows the disc wars.

So do I.

I know them from long ago. Better then even he does. I cannot see the memories of this, but I understand their meanings.

I know from them the way the weapon obeys, I know the twists and curls it forms in the air and the slicing sound with which it penetrates the body of another. Yes, I know these battles well.

I know the control. The oneness with my weapon.

It is a part of me.

_They_ are a part of me.

This opponent deserves my fullest onslaught. I will battle him with both discs. He is worthy of this much.

Satisfaction.

So easy is this movement, but graceful, flawless. It pulses through me.

I consume my own focus as I draw the disc into two, both of them counterparts to one another. They are glowing, throbbing twins that pulsate with my energy as I activate them. They jolt in my hand, buck against my palms.

Their blades spin audibly as I draw them to arms length. Gliding through space with their elegance in hand, I am a single, fluid, idealized display of movement.

I am prepared now: one behind me, cocked and ready, one before me, aimed at his core.

His mouth falls open.

He sees death in this unique ability that only I possess.

And then he hurls his weapon at me.

It is a low shot, and I am airborne even as it passes. I twine through space and return to the transparency of the floor beneath me on bent knees and grounded feet.

My retaliation is swift.

The weapon soars past him. His avoidance is graceful. Practiced. But narrow.

My disc meets the wall, sending ripples and waves through it from the impact, and cuts through the air to return to me. It meets my open hand with a shock, and my fingers draw around it once more as I twist; turning on the balls of my feet to hurl the other disc towards him.

I complete the throw, and I halt in a half crouch and watch its progress, ready to spring and posed with extended arms and wide spread legs.

I am braced. I cannot be felled.

He deflects the shot, and it hurtles back to where I stand, aimed against its own master.

And then I am flattened, pressed against the ground as it swishes overhead.

And then, I am patient. I wait for its return, and reach up behind my back to catch it precisely as it passes over me again.

Weapons returned, I roll forward onto the heels of my palms and extend the length of my body upwards. I am standing on my hands, discs still within my grip.

I am aware that he is taking aim at my exposed back. I am looking up at him with a bent neck.

So , I spring from the hands that support me, flipping myself back to my feet.

I cross my discs before me, and then throw my arms out again as his weapon meets them. It is a perfect deflection. Faultlessly timed. Inspiringly executed.

I stand in defiance now, my arms extended, head bowed with the focus of my gaze, hands level with my hips and feet together. My stance is reflected in the surface of his helmet: perfect calm, seething power that is awesome to see. Intimidating.

I am an indescribable site . . . and for a moment, I am drawn into the intensity of the goings on. My own movements, the familiar, near-joy of the combat . . .

_End him._

The command that cuts through my distraction is divine, it sounds like Clu in the confines of my skull.

But there is another sound now, even as the command refocuses me. It is a beeping, a ticking timer.

The image on the floor of two white arrows is spinning. The opponent stops to notice as well.

He turns and bolts up the wall as we are rolled head over heels by a change in gravity.

My attention is ripped from thought completely by the change, and I become pure motion.

My head snaps up, my left arm bringing my disc near my chest, my right extending as I am dropped from the floor beneath me, hurtling towards what was the ceiling a moment before.

I am coming down on top of him, pulling my legs up with bent knees, ready to spring and to land all at once as I invert myself along with the room.

He dodges my descent, and I arrive inches from his covered face.

_Melee._

Our weapons meet, sparks flying. It is hand to hand now, and I drop down, pivot on my palm against the ground, flipping over his extended arm with an impossibly bent back as I dodge his close combat strikes.

It is an intricate dance. We twine in and out of one another.

It would be easy to end him now, yet I am satisfied so with this battle, I do not wish it.

And then his disc comes so close to my side that I feel its heat.

Too close.

_Error._

_FINISH, RINZLER._

No more. I must acquiesce. . . But there is the beeping again, we will flip soon.

Perfect.

I leap. I spin through the air, and as the floor changes once more into a ceiling, I am again face to face with this champion. My opponent.

_You are wrong, program._

I think this as I watch him die.

He came down as I did when the room inverted . . . but I was more ready than he. Better. He landed where I had calculated, and my weapons closed in on him from either side, beneath his raised arms as his feet met the floor.

He collapses now, a dying sound rushing out of him that means nothing to me but triumph.

The pieces of him clatter across the floor. There is a pause.

And then the announcement of my victory meets a silent stadium.

All that is left of his form derezzes at my feet into a pile of broken, glittering data. Rezic, the opponent, is dead.

All at once, the crowd below me erupts.

_Correct._

I do not respond to them. It is unnecessary to acknowledge the wordless screams. I quietly replace my weapon and turn towards my master's ship, awaiting approval and my next command.

But the crowd, they form words below me. I cannot help but notice.

It becomes a rhythm, a chant. A throbbing in time with my system's own quiet cycling. It is one word, over and over.

One, perfect word.

_They know my name._


	8. Prelude

There is a disc on my back. It syncs with my being, knows me. Is me. Holds together the fragments of Rinzler that collide in my internal systems like so many conflicting currents.

There is an order in my code. I do not know it, cannot name it. Do not remember what deplorable errors it has forced me to commit.

But it is there. The torturous product of a forgotten creator's naive omnipotence.

It is there, and I can feel it. Burning inside of me, cycling through me, a fundamental element that I could not survive without.

It is a directive.

It is a directive that defines me, but which I myself cannot define despite my system's efforts.

_Initiate identification sequence._

_Designation: Rinzler._

_Designation type: Security._

_Primary directive: I-_

_Error._

_Primary directive (second attempt): __I fight- I fight for-_

_. . . fight for-_

_WARNING: unauthorized activity._

No...

_Primary directive (third attempt): _

_I._

_Fight._

_For. The-_

_ERROR._

_For. _

_The-_

_WARNING: System overload for Rinzler program imminent._

_- for the. . ._

_WARNING: INTERNAL SECURITY BREACH._

_I fight-_

_ERROR._

_For- _

_WARNING. WARNING. WARNING. WARNING. WARNING..._

_I fight for the-_

_For the-_

_WARNING._

_I FIGHT FOR THE-_

**I FIGHT FOR CLU.**

I short circuit. I am not strong enough.

My system overloads.

_EXECUTE FORCED SHUT DOWN._

I collapse.

* * *

Author's note: If there is a way to tab over on this site, I would really love to know it. Help? Please?

Anyway, thanks again for reading, and keep those reviews coming! I live on those things. XD

End of line.


	9. Mercy

The ISOs knew things.

They understood words. Unspoken words.

They built cities without guidance.

They were not born.

Their kind emerged from the sea. Products of its raw data. Of infinite and dangerous potential.

They knew too much.

Just as the one who is dying now at my feet knows.

He understands how he will end.

Sheltered by the curve of his fragile body is a power spring.

A rarity.

Yet he found it, found it in these cold, unforgiving outlands where he has sequestered himself.

The liquid is iridescent. Contaminated. Tainted by the passing of the Abraxas virus, many cycles before.

My scans see this.

The ISO did not.

Their kind never see. Never have.

They did not see how they were destroying the grid. How they corrupted our peace.

The ISOs were a plague. An infection built on naivety, fueled by wisdom.

Broken by Clu.

This ISO, hiding beneath the crude shelter of a rocky outcrop, will die now because he did not see the danger before him. Fitting.

But I see the truth. The truth that he knows. The truth of his death.

His passing will not be easy. It will be slow.

As his body breaks around him, as his circuits short and his functions default, he will feel it.

And he will helpless.

And he will suffer.

His gray eyes are cold.

They look up to me, flickering with pale yellow sparks that long ago burnt out their ability to see.

He knows that I am here. Knows how my perimeter sweep has discovered him in his death throws. He hears in my own constant thrumming that I am considering the nature of his demise.

_Pitiful creature._

I think this as I look at him.

And he responds.

From where he lies huddled on the ground, his voice emerges. It is not natural speech.

Fragments of broken data fall from his mouth as it opens. The sound is shredded by the wreckage of his collapsing throat.

Broken, dry, hollow. That is the wretched voice that comes from the ISO creature.

Crackling through his own debris, it says two words.

"Save me."

His words cut.

They draw on the unknowable inside me. Seek the depths of my code. They discover something.

Mercy.

I raise my baton. A blade activates.

There is a moment, only a fragment of a second, of motion.

Then the weapon plunges into his shoulder to the hilt.

Now contaminated, I release it, and my baton falls alongside the corrupted pixels of his body.

Skittering into a hundred million fragments that throb with a pale yellow pulse, the ISO dies.

The suffering ends.


	10. Misstep

He looks as I remember. He is pale faced, hollow eyed. He is like a grid worm.

Jarvis has been overseeing the execution of Clu's initiative for the colonies for some time. But he has returned now, returned to speak on his findings.

But as I observe him in silent stillness, he stops.

He peers sideways from his incomprehensible visor. Glances in my direction.

What does he want?

"Jarvis?" Clu is irritated.

I am unsurprised.

"Yes sir!"

A perfect, obedient jumble of words follows. Accurate. But he says nothing. Accomplishes nothing. Extraneous.

Sit, Jarvis. Stay, Jarvis. Roll over. Speak.

I do not know what a dog is. I do not remember learning of their existence. But I know that these are the correct commands to direct at one.

And I see that they fit this subservient coward.

Jarvis is not stupid. He is shifty, letting other's carry him into relevance and advancement. But he is utterly inept. Best left ignored.

Otherwise, he is an irritant.

Clu waits for the stuttering words to make sense. But they do not. Instead they trail off, become a moment of pause.

And then he asks some incongruent question I cannot fathom.

"Does he always do that?"

_What is he talking about?_

Clu glances at me.

His eyes are bright. His mouth sharp. His face bored.

He speaks:

"It suits him."

I process, but do not comprehend this, either. There is nothing amiss in me. But I am the only other who is present.

Frustration.

They both look, now. Look over at me. I do not look back . . .

Then Clu speaks again.

"Rinzler."

My head snaps up. I look to him. But he waves his hand at me, dismissive.

_A test._

I return to my usual posture.

Jarvis stares.

"Well," he says finally. It is all he can manage.

When he completes his report, though, he looks at me again. He is trying to be disdainful.

Instead I sense discomfort.

"You get used to it," Clu says. He is snide. Bored with his servants antics. Sees his cowardice as I do.

Jarvis is chagrined. He compensates. Feigns disinterest as he responds. Tries to looks strong.

"One would hope," he comments dryly.

I still cannot fathom his meaning.

But there is quiet as he finally stops talking. And in it, I understand.

He has been talking about the sound.

_My_ sound.

It is filling up the room. Distorted background noise. Steady and meaningless and unintentional.

How long have I been making it?

I haven't been aware of it. Would not have been, if Jarvis had not commented.

When did it start again?

_. . . Did it ever stop?_

I know Cu to be right. I trust in his decisions. I trust his choice to leave the sound in me.

But I know it in my code: I am unnerved by the ramifications of this moment.

I am not so in control of myself as I thought. What else do I do, without realizing that I am doing it?

This is disturbing. Raises this and other questions in my mind.

Dangerous questions.

_WARNING: Corruptible content identified._

_Identify content: memory file._

_. . . _My system takes over. I have not authorized this, either.

_File reclassified: Priority-2. Authorized access only._

Wait . . .

_File removed to high clearance memory._

Too late.

_Redirecting-_

I am standing in Clu's central control center. As I should be. As I have been.

I realize that Jarvis has just left the room, returned from the colonies. He had reported success.

I know this.

But I cannot remember the last several minutes.

I try to, and there is pain.

Punishment .

. . . I wonder what I did wrong.

* * *

Author's note: Chapter ten already? Woot!

Alright, so, normally I loath review-begging, but I've recently experienced a moment of writer's enlightenment (this is what I get for seeing Legacy again, hah,) that ill change some of my goals for this story; and I would REALLY REALLY REALLY appreciate some constructive criticism to help me out. After all, this could potentially get a little crazy over on my end. ^^

So, yes, it's official: I'm begging. PLEASE, please toss some critique my way, and be as brutal/comprehensive as you can! I'll be forever in your debt if you do. Oh, and I am still taking requests for scenarios you guys want to see him in, so those are welcome as well. ^^

Anyway, thanks to all of you for reading this far. I hope you enjoy everything that's coming next!

End of line.


	11. Purpose

Time goes by.

The cycles pass.

My world changes.

I do not.

Clu builds. We follow. We build as well.

Our world is beautiful.

We are moving towards perfection, unknowable and tantalizing. Our maximum potential is an ever increasing possibility.

But there is work to be done. I do not stop. To obtain such distant perfection, we cannot lose ground.

I patrol my city. I uphold it. I monitor the workings of the programs around me in accordance with my own orders.

I watch them remove the shrapnel from the ISO purge. I watch them construct a soaring city from the wreckage. I watch as they outgrow their programming, as they become bored.

They individualize in expansive new ways.

They change their appearances as reflections of their beliefs. Some find ways to darken the pixels of their skin, they tattoo designs on themselves. Others remove their hair, or change its natural setting. They change their fashions.

I do not know if Clu cares, or sees. If he does, he does, he does not show concern about the fact that they create groups, factions, in this way. Innocuous factions, but factions none the less.

They divide into groups like the spiritual programs: silent, mild. Staying low.

The aggressive programs: warriors.

The workers: they do not change, they are consistent. They are uniform. Neutral. White.

The independents: they seek the easiest course. They do what they are told if it suits them. And it does.

There are many other groups as well. And many blur together. Some are not specific, simply existing as they see fit. Some are innocent.

Some are potentially worrisome.

Yet . . ., I see civilization in their conflicting change and consistency. I see expansion in these developing identities, despite my wariness of their existence. I see progress as I move among them to remove the subversives, the defectives, and the misguided.

That is part of what I do. I apprehend.

And then Clu fixes them. No one lacks intention here. No one lacks use. Clu is gracious. He gives them a place, gives them purpose.

And those who will not be fixed. . . I take.

I take them in the games. I take them with the velocity of the grid, through the athleticism of the disc wars. I take them all.

And I like it.

I like the games.

They please me. My efficiency in them pleases me. I enjoy my own dexterity with death, the testing of my body and my abilities, the intricacy of the interactions between players. . . I am confident in my own perfection when I compete; and I could do so without end.

But Clu does not wish it. He stops me. Holds me back, keeps me as a monitor for the games instead of a competitor. But I accept this, and so, I monitor. It is where I am needed. I am the safeguard against system failure.

And I am always ready. Defective combatants . . . they do not make it past me to wherever it is they believe they will go if they escape.

I am always good at what I do.

And, in turn, what I do completes me. Makes me whole. Fills the void of unanswered questions of identity that cling subversively to the forbidden initiative that haunts me in my depths.

I _survive_ by doing. By doing perfectly.

I am obedient, or dominant, passive or aggressive . . .I am always ideal. I see the situations that surround me as completed elements. I absorb them in an instant, and I react dynamically, never the same way, never automatic.

_That_ is what makes me exceptional.

The need to observe, to notice, to compile and to know, this is automatic. The need to follow Clu's orders, to serve him and protect my system, these are automatic. But _I _am not automatic.

_That_ is what makes me who I am.

I work. I build. I serve. But I am not blind. I follow what I know to be right, be it Clu's orders (which are always right) or my own observation. I know what it is I am doing. I am not contained. I refuse.

_I_ am a free element. And any day that comes which reveals otherwise, will be the day in which everything will change. At whatever cost.

I am Rinzler.

I maintain order in this system. I keep it safe. Even the nagging shadow of the classified primary directive lurking inside does not entirely disagree with this statement; I cling to its validity . . .

And so, the cycles pass.

They pass, and we evolve, and I maintain.

I do what is correct.

I do what is right.

_. . . Perfect Rinzler._


	12. Castor

He is called Castor, and he is Zuse. I know his face.

He stands, apprehended, at the end of my arm, my hand clamped around the base of his neck. His hands are cuffed behind his back. There is a mix of understandable terror and innocent chagrin on his pointed features as he stands before his master.

"Let him go," Clu says. His helmet is down. He looks impenetrable.

I release my captive.

Castor's eyes jump erratically around the room as if contemplating his escape, before his shivering, thin lipped mouth falls into a cagey smile.

"Our illustrious leader at last," he begins, shaking but bright eyed.

I must confess surprise. He is frightened, but he is not debilitated as so many are. He is neither defiant nor submissive.

He_ is,_ however, disconcertingly weird.

I found him in a club in beta sector that was built, somehow, down into the ground itself.

It was a despicable, dilapidated, darkened place with faulty circuitry and floors slickened by refined power spilled by overzealous patrons. It smelled. Reeked of power-sludge and the burning sour of shorting circuits.

The patrons themselves were tipsy with excess. Their circuits pulsed. Hot. Sizzling. Ready. Their motions, their faces, they were not bashful, not ashamed of their intent to exchange energy with one another before the milicycle's end.

The rabble shrieked when I entered, shrieked in a kind of rabid eagerness and simultaneous fear. Their faces glittered with the newest advent in individual fashion, a sort of sparkling smear they wore on their faces and lips. Many had masks across their eyes as well, making their faces spin incomprehensibly in my vision. Their circuits and sparkles cut through the darkness.

So did the six spinning blades of the discs of those who rose to expel me.

The same six who's fragmented, glistening pieces become one with the reeking mess on the floor a moment later.

The screams had been of horror then. Of fear. They shrank back into every corner, overturning tables, clambering over benches and pressing themselves hopelessly against the walls. Smart programs. Staying out of my way.

I could see my target behind them, trying to flee.

The wall behind the bar was a transparent pane, and the lounge behind was where he was. He ran on bent knees, low to the ground, white and gray hood pulled far over his head. As if I could miss him.

As if I could be fooled.

I ran.

My feet beat the floor with rhythmic thudding, pieces of the felled breaking under my weight as I sought traction on the slickened floors.

My target was making his way to a hidden rear exit. Realizing my pursuit, he was now running normally. He seemed to have extensive experience in the matter of fleeing: He was swift.

I catapulted myself onto the bar itself and launched after him.

Tucking myself together, I careened through the glass wall, shattering it. I hit the ground on the other side headfirst, tucking my neck so that I rolled over on my own shoulders to rise up again on my feet, disc already in hand.

I was dividing it even as I flowed back into the motion of running.

My target was exiting ahead of me, entering a long and dimly lit hallway. His destination lay at its end: a ladder to some higher level of this dilapidated section of my otherwise glistening city.

But then he looked over his shoulder.

And he saw me.

And he made the swift and wise decision to live another day.

He skidded to a stop, spinning around to face me with his hands in the air, coming to rest at the very foot of his ladder to freedom.

I did not put my discs away until I had his hands trapped behind him and my hand around his neck.

Which brings me to where I now stand in disbelief.

I cannot fathom what I am seeing.

Cluis _listening_ to Castor's babbling. Listening with his fingertips pressed together under his helmet sheltered chin. Listening like a business partner to the former accomplice to our system's greatest plague.

And he likes what he hears.

* * *

Author's note: Sheesh guys, I should have started begging ages ago. XD Thank you all so much for your reviews, they're really helping me get by writer's zen back... hence the double-update. ^^ Keep em' coming everyone, you guys are awesome, and I love to know what you're thinking about this!

Thanks again. :D

End of line.


	13. Women

The End of Line club is far removed from the nauseating dive in which I found castor. It is white. Ambient. There is a steely color to the walls that blurs with illuminated blues and greens of its patrons.

These programs perceive themselves as glamorous. I cannot fathom their purpose. Nobody who looks the way that they do can possibly be useful or productive. Their extravagance and unnecessary trappings capture the eye and distract the mind.

Perhaps that is the point.

I was never one for dance clubs.

_Alert._

What do I mean by that?

. . .

I have never participated in "clubbing."

That's better.

As the cycles have passed, I have found a greater control over my own rambling internalization, a side effect of my need to observe. A defect of being constantly alert. Still, I catch myself at times intensely absorbed in the present, or dangerously reflective on the bygone and unreachable.

The nagging of my hidden directive has not faded.

But neither has my sense of self. Of my duties.

Or, in this moment, my sense of the programs around me.

There is a man on a bench near me who is contemplating some kind of irrational action. Perhaps it is toward the female beside him. Perhaps not. He needs to be watched.

There is a woman carrying a tray of drinks who is walking with a suppressed gate, hiding a medical patch on her exposed upper thigh. A guard nearby me is becoming distracted by her questionable outfit in a way that makes no rational sense.

Several programs are trying not to stare at me. They are upset. Admiring. Disturbed. Afraid. Intrigued.

Clu is above us in Castor's personal lounge, his presence sending a hum of excitement through the crowd. This, in turn, is encouraging the two mp3 programs above us. They are watching the programs below more than the patrons realize. They appear to be absorbed in their control panel, but they are reacting to the tenure of the room with their playing. Music vibrates the floor beneath me, in the wall at my back.

I am aware of all of these things without so much as lifting my head. My posture is a waiting one. One which is readied, stiffened, patient.

I spend a significant amount of time posed this way.

There is woman inching nearer to me, however, who doesn't seem to be fazed by my anti-social posture. She is sliding down the length of the bar. Her intent is focused on me despite her extraneous gestures to the contrary. She leans on the bar, leans far over to allow the light overhead to play off of her body's curvature as she orders a drink, looking purposefully away from me.

She is wearing black.

Her circuits are orange. The color seems incorrect.

I have felt this before. . .

_Error._

I am not supposed to remember those events. They are hidden away in my high clearance memory for a reason.

But I do. I do remember because the files were not hidden there by my system.

I put them there myself.

I stashed them there because I _must_ remember.

I must remember that there _was_ a woman, once.

She was there for a very long time, before, when I cannot and must not remember. And she was there again, briefly, in Clu's grasp.

And then she went away.

As she should.

But I remember her. I remember the blue eyes. Large and intense. Framed my long blonde lashes that exponentially intensified their simultaneous softness and ferocity. I remember the shape of her face, the softness of her lips, the way her hair fell.

I remember the curve of her, her structure with wide hips but such a small waist she seemed she should fit between my palms. I remember the delicate shoulders and the foreign, old fashioned shapes of her circuitry on her chest.

I remember she was blue. Blue in a neon shade that does not exist in this system, but comes from a place I lost a long time ago.

_Error._

No, not lost. Left behind.

_ERROR._

Not left. Never was. The old place is from my old self. It is wrong, incorrect, forbidden for good reason by a benevolent master.

. . . Forbidden as he would have forbidden my memory of _her_ if I had not sequestered it away on my own . . .

_Warning: potentially corruptible data. . . _

Never mind.

My focus returns to the present where it belongs. I have not lost track of the approaching woman, despite my reminiscing, nor have I lost track of any of the others.

The questionable man has made his move. He was focused on the female, after all.

The guard, too, is consumed by women. Though duty binds him where he stands, his distraction is so clearly and utterly profound he has made himself effectively useless.

The object of his focus, meanwhile, acknowledges nothing, and now seeks a sitting position in order to hide the patch she is so clearly concerned with.

The other curios and fearful programs near me maintain their nagging, intermittent staring. I am being scrutinized.

For some reason, though it has no effect on me, I don't like it. There is something illogical, deep, deep in my code, which tells me that I should not let anyone look too closely.

Stranger still, this concern is not centered around myself entirely, but around their wellbeing as well. Why?

_What truth could they find?_

The woman with orange circuits moves towards me, slinking along the wall as if she can avoid attention from myself and everyone else in the room. She is an ideal distraction from the irksome, idiotic sensation.

The feeling that there is some horrible truth that I should hide.

I turn my head to look down at her as she approaches. I am not as unaware as she believes.

As she meets my gaze through the screen of my helmet, she halts.

She is afraid.

But there is also something else. . .

I realize that she is about to make herself into an even greater distraction than I calculated for. Extraneous, useless, now problem instead of a solution . . .

. . . But not unattractive.

_Unnecessary, Rinzler._

I recall myself. I look back to the room at large.

I cannot help but notice how few of the patrons are dancing, despite the overwhelming music.

And so many of them, still, are looking at me. It's irritating. Unnerving.

What do they want? What do they expect?

_. . . Who are they? Why does it matter? WHAT IS THE POINT?_

This place is impossible. . .

I am uncomfortable. Dissatisfied with this entire scenario. This is not where I belong.

_Clu . . ._

I hear my own frustration increasing in volume. But the sound is not a reflection on my conscious mind. I do not really mean to be irritated.

Regardless of the exasperating social situation and the environment of sickening excess, I am here for a reason. I am here to protect my master. To execute commands:

I am here to monitor the workings of this place, whatever I think of it, as Castor is on a . . . "short leash."

This is another old term, a user phrase I've picked up somewhere, but I understand its general meaning, and it suits the situation. Castor is being kept on a _very_ short leash.

I still cannot fathom _why_ Clu is doing this . . . but his designs are great. I do not question.

The woman is now walking towards me with renewed confidence. She draws close enough that I am almost compelled to look at her directly once again.

But I am busy now. I am working. She is in the way.

"Rinzler," she says.

As I focus in on the sound, my head ducks minutely. She realizes that I am still aware of her. Keeps talking . . .

"I've heard about you. Seen you a few times, too. I work down in prototyping."

_Prototyping. . . _

The _other_ slams into my mind again. A blockade on my other functions, I am filled with blue eyes.

The woman beside me now, her eyes are a strange brown. Hazel and yellow come together to make gold. Her hair is brown also, cut with creamy streaks of blonde.

I remember, suddenly, another shade of blonde. I like this one better.

_NO. Distracting memory, beautiful program, go away . . ._

I cannot control the file I have stashed. I should have let Clu see it, delete it . . . So disruptive . . .

_NO._

I allow the present woman to take my attention away again. She is considerably less problematic. Less distracting. Less connected to me. Less...

_RINZLER._

I am aware again. My renewed sweep of the room reveals nothing, accept that the guard has surrendered to desire. I am unimpressed with his focus. . . But the situation is clear, and so I cannot blame him for succumbing to an urge I know to be "normal."

The room is throbbing still. The light phases down, becomes dimmer in time with a change of musical pace.

Now, the patrons dance. They twist, intertwine, bursting with energy . . . even those moving alone.

The woman's eyes brighten over her wide mouth in the newly seductive atmosphere. It suits her, accentuating the glow of her circuits on her skin. It is dark, midtone. She_ is_ attractive. It is not her fault I am so disinterested.

"I don't suppose you dance. . .?"

_**NO.**_

She waits for a response.

_I don't speak . . ._

Speech is unnecessary.

She waits. She seems uncertain now, but she is still mindlessly confident enough not to turn away.

"Guess not . . ."

She doesn't understand. Doesn't see it.

But then I realize.

Her voice, her dilated eyes, they tell me she is distant. Running on basic functions and urges. Not herself.

She is irrational because she is a repurpose.

I do not know why Clu lets them become so hollow, perhaps it is necessary.

But I've seen it before. Seen it in _Her . . ._

_STOP._

I like _her _better in sleep. I like her better in random access dreams when she is less distracting. This woman, this different, perfect woman who I cannot and will not forget . . . she does not _hurt_ in dreams.

This is the other reason I do not think of _her_.

Something about her brings pain.

But it is not punishment. It is something else. It is something deep, something disturbingly bitter and heavy that is tied as integrally to my being as the forbidden directive itself . . .

She is dangerous. Her memory draws me towards those depths, creates the desire to break into the files I should not see, to understand who I was when I knew her.

_WARNING-_

I crush this train of thought. I must maintain control. I have to.

I look back to the woman. For a moment, fear widens her already large, slanting eyes once again.

Then it gives way once more to the unnerving thing . . . the _desire_ she is struggling to contain.

_Desire?_

This is . . . rare . . .

_NO._

This is wrong.

It is not wrong because my system says so. It is wrong because I know it is. It is wrong because of the other. Somehow, she is a part of me. Something I cannot escape, and cannot make myself want to. Not for long. I can't let myself forget. Not her.

Not. Her.

The woman is looking at me. Expectant. Excited. Eager.

_I can't . . . _

I try to make the woman understand, stare into her. But she doesn't. She inches closer. Pushes limits. . .

Her fingertip brushes mine. There is shock of her energy in the touch.

I become a flurry of motion. I retract so roughly that I frighten her. She reverses away from me, eyes wide, hands up defensively.

I look at her. She looks back. She looks with wide terrified, overwhelmed eyes.

What did she feel with that touch? I do not know, but it was more than she was programmed to handle.

She is momentarily frozen by overload.

And she has spilled her drink on herself . . .

I know I should be sympathetic. But I am not. I clench my fist instead. I erase whatever energy she has tainted me with during her misguided attempt at seduction. Naive. Stupid.

_No . . . repurposed._

"Oh . . ." she says, returning to the present.

But it is over.

She nods once. Retreats. Falls back into the crowd and disappears.

I return to my duty. I push away everything else. The memories. The sour taste in my mouth.

Through all of this, the programs are _still_ staring. My displacement is exaggerated by their attentions.

When Clu reappears, I am eager to go. I have seen what I need to see.

What I do not see, however, is what is supposedly so appealing about this place.

I don't mind. I'd rather not know.

* * *

Author's note: Ok, so, a few things.

1) As you may have noticed, his narrative style has gotten a little less... choppy. This is intentional. BUT, I would like to know what you guys think. Do you still get the full impact of the character this way? I AM experimenting, so help me out!

2) The idea of Rinzler at the End of Line was a request, and while TECHNICALLY I've done this, the truth is that Yori ate the chapter. -_- So, my apologies to holly-fowl-4-eva for letting the End of Line premise become somewhat secondary, but thank you SOOOO much for suggesting it to me in the first place!

3) _About_ Yori... heh. In my little world of Tron I'm creating here, all of my stories take place on the same timeline, and are just told at different points along it and from different POVs. That said, I had to chuck in a little of Survivor's Tale/Different/Perfect. If you guys HAVEN'T read those, and want to know more about his vague references to Yori, that's where you'll find it.

BUT, now I'm done babbling, and all I have to say is thanks, again, for reading! ^^

End of line.


	14. Lapse

The combatant today makes little sense.

He looks at me, and he drops his disc.

And he calls me _Tron_.

_What the-_

The command to kill him is suddenly being sounded from every corner of my system and I am thundering towards him.

He picks up the disc again. Desperate defense.

But he is dead before I can finish the old user-phrase of my thought.

_-hell?_

I stand over his remains. My system cycles audibly in my ears.

But it doesn't erase the event. It can't. It only flashes error messages, alerts, and yellow warnings before my dizzied eyes. It can't stop whatever is thundering through my code . . .

I feel weak.

Suddenly, things are fading.

I'm low on power, I realize. I've overdone it. Overestimated.

I am spinning. Files are thrashing around, struggling to open. Overwhelming my lagging system.

_Put your disc back. . ._

. . . I think I'm glitching . . .

Spinning. Whirring. Falling.

_Drowning. . ._

And then it's over. My back-up, my solidity, my stability, they return.

I've replaced my disc.

My system takes hold of it, clinging to its orders and overrides, and hurries to catch up.

I am barely in time. In time to cut myself off from something forbidden. From something incorrect.

From . . . from . . .

_Corrupted file removed._

_Redirecting-_

What was it he'd said?


	15. Flynn Lives

When I brought Clu the discs from amidst the sea of pixels on the floor, they were dead, just as their owners.

He looked at them, and took them away.

I followed.

He uploaded the discs into his personal control center, one by one, and resurrected their data via a control panel and view screen instead of by hand as he, and only he, is capable of doing.

There were twelve of them.

_Twelve_ misguided and adapted programs sent to put up a resistance against their savoir.

They did it for the false creator.

For the man who once abandoned their home system for hundreds of cycles at a time. The one who left Clu to derive order from the chaos as a program was never intended to do. The one who let the ISOs spread until their systematic elimination was the only option left. _That_ creator.

The one who was able to lead even the former protector of this system onto the fatal path of treachery and fanaticism.

I have heard of Tron. I well know the name of the _former_ force of justice of the grid, of the _previous_ champion of the games, the once companion of the false creator, the program who turned like an animal on his own kind to defend the user who allowed us to be led so far astray.

Everyone knows the story.

I suppose the difficulty is that not everyone interprets it accurately.

Some are delusional. There are programs (most often spiritual fanatics like him,) who believe that he was justified, and that the user should have been protected. That Tron did what was not a traitor, but a hero, one who would have done even more had he not been derezzed himself.

As Clu goes through their discs and opens up their likenesses on the expanse of view screens around us, I recognize the shaved heads and tattooed patterns of twelve such fanatics . . . Twelve peaceful programs who now lie in scattered pieces across the floor of Clu's central chamber.

I took four of them myself. The four members of the Black Guard who were also in their master's attendance took the rest.

I am not pleased.

I see, as Clu files through the remnants of files on their leftover discs like so many encoded freeze-frames, that they were not warriors from birth. I see, just as he does, the flawlessly layered adaptations in their source code that transformed each of them from a persecuted and silent worshiper into a soldier in a suicidal offensive front. I see basic utility programs, operators of harmless applications, who were tainted by the upgrading of a user.

The false creator did this.

He is alive.

. . . Alive, unlike the guiltless programs who he fabricated from their intended forms and sent to fight his battles. The blindly devout innocents who's volunteerism he must have exploited.

_Disgusting._

_This_ is why Clu is our leader. _This_is why we need him.

This is why I am not, in any manner, pleased by the confirmation of the continued existence of our troublesome creator. . .

_No._

. . . That was a lie.

_ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR-_

The pain that comes to me as punishment is indescribable.

My entire body seems to ignite. It feels as if my systems are being shred. I feel that I am being torn apart, pixel by pixel, and I am burning like a shorted circuit . . . all of this inside of me where no one can see.

I can't breathe.

I can't see.

My throat seals itself, constricts until pixels grind against pixels and I am choking on breaking data. I can't move. My fingers have become rigid claws on the ends of my arms, which are stiffened at my sides as burning power-surges shoot through their circuits.

It is torture. It is agony. It is excruciating, mind-numbing, impossible pain that begins in the overrides saved in my disc and moves outward through every, searing inch of my body until I actually feel capable of screaming.

Not that I can make my mouth form words. Not that there are any in existence that will express this.

If this goes on for another nanosecond, though, it's going to shut me down. My systems don't have the capacity to handle it. This much pain isn't intended to be suffered by anyone who is not in the process of dying.

It isn't meant to be survived.

And then:

_I REJECT THE USERS_.

I cannot tell if these words smashing through my head are command line or a plea from my pain receptors to the rest of my system, but in whichever case, the fact that thinking them allows me to at least gasp for air once again is enough to imprint this on me forever as one of the most gracious phrases I am capable of processing.

Breathing, though, brings with is a single, body wracking cough.

It is horrific sound, a snarl and the thrumming of a glitched engine all at once, an unwelcome and chilling fissure in my normal harmonics. It is jagged with broken data, distorted, deep and sour.

It repulses me.

To the other two programs in the room, however, it seems to be deeply disturbing as well as startling. Jarvis jumps nearly out of his skin, and even the unshakable Clu whirls around to look at me.

What color Jarvis had is utterly gone.

I've actually frightened them. They both look at me with more wariness than they would afford a desperate, dying virus.

And they look for a long time. Even when my normal rhythm returns, they are seemingly still distrusting. They are wary as they return to work despite my submissive stance and quiet rumblings.

I am ashamed of myself now as well as being infuriated.

It is a potent mixture. In this moment, I could go so far as to kill the false creator myself.

Well, if Clu ordered it, that is.

. . .

_Something is wrong with me._


	16. Sleep II: the Loop

I blame the uprisings. They are what bring me the fitful dreams, the dreams that shock me awake so quickly that I cannot so much as activate my helmet as I'm supposed to before reaching consciousness, something for which my system reprimands me. . . disciplining me with pain.

I suffer for the false creator's uprisings.

Most recently his devotees took a solar sailor platform hostage, refusing to let anyone board or and operators by to start transport until the "Creator" was" granted access to the portal."

This was an interesting proposition, seeing as the portal is closed. A proposition which, without question, was a ruse to hide something else, or to distract us from it, neither one of which could be allowed.

So Clu did not grant access. Instead, he took the undesirables in, and interrogated them. All of them.

I, in turn, fulfilled my usual role of persuading their confession via slices of a disc's edge.

These programs, though, they were strong in their faith. And they were loyal.

They would not talk.

I cut them and slashed them and broke them and dismembered them, but they would not confess. They kneeled before Clu, falling to pieces under my blows, each of which I struck with a nod from my master . . . nods which they could have stopped, could have prevented, if they had only spoken.

But they didn't.

And they died.

This time there were 22 of them.

And I know their names.

Some of them I learned as they shouted their designations in place of confession, as they screamed out under the cut of my blade to maintain their resistance, as they used up all they had of their final breaths.

But there were others, as well. Others whose names I recalled automatically upon seeing their faces. Faces I looked into as deresolution took hold . . .

They were _alive_.

Rom and Pria, Tuc and Helix, Faq and Mara, Athens and Micros . . . They were all vibrant, and brave, and strong . . .

And I knew them. I don't know from when. I don't know why. But I knew their names, and I knew_ them . . ._

But I tortured them anyway.

I tortured them to _death_.

I know I'm not supposed to remember. I know that I can't afford to think too deeply. But I _can_ feel, and I cannot shake the sensation that curls through me now. The feeling that, that . . .

That something about this bothers me.

And I do not like it. It is a haunting addition to the varied collection of disquieting things I carry; a collection which consists of the woman who did not stay, the directive I cannot see, the thousands of files I cannot access, the compiled moments which I cannot remember . . . And the questions. Questions that once asked cannot be answered nor escaped, and which are wrong, though I do not, must not, understand why.

The questions that always come to me despite myself.

At this moment, one such question is that of the line between servant, warrior, and murderer. A nagging in me wants to know if I have crossed it, and if so, why it matters . . . which leads me to another incongruent and impossible query:

_What have I become?_

I can't answer this. I can't answer this because I can't assess the difference between what I am and what I once was. And I can't assess the difference because there is no difference.

This is all I have ever been.

The impossibility lies within the fact that there is actually nothing to compare to.

_. . . Not that I can remember . . ._

_ERROR._

The word slices through me.

Another wrong. Another glitch. Another doubt. Another misstep. Another imperfection.

And worse, it will also become another restless dream, one which will wake me with self-inflicted torture of my own, for dreams are worse than waking. In dreams, the questions, despite their error, seek answers . . .

Answers for which I will undoubtedly be punished upon waking, but which will just as undoubtedly lead to more questions upon review that will lead to more dreams, and to more, and more, and ...

And therein lies the cycle. My endless loop.

_This is torture_.

I do not want to sleep. I want to end this.

And yet . . . I can't.

_Entering stand-by mode-_

I must not. Sleep is necessary. . .

_Progress: 75%. External systems shutting down._

Clu _wants _me to sleep. Commands it . . .

_90%_

But why? I do not . . . why would he . . . I . . . . .

_Stand-by activated._

The cycle continues.


	17. Fast Forward

Time passes me quickly, but despite its going, I do not change.

The resistance has ended. Things are going well. Today, Clu will declare to his people that we have achieved our maximum capacity. That we are now, truly, a perfect system.

All except for me.

I don't know why Clu has allowed it, but somehow, I am certain that he has. Not that it matters. I am consumed. I am overpowered by one, single fact:

The cycle, the loop of identity I am caught in, has not ended.

In fact, it has gotten worse. And I try, as I always do, to justify. To grapple. To conquer and to compact my flaws. But I cannot win. I stand instead at a. . . "cross roads." A "tipping point."

I am precarious.

Soon, something in me will have to give.

I am waiting, now. Just waiting to reach my "breaking point," my maximum capacity. Waiting for relief.

* * *

Author's note: Guys, I am stuck in a rut, and so is Rinzler. I bet you're starting to notice.

However, I just want to say thanks to all of you for reading this far despite that. (Double thanks to everyone who has been reviewing, also!)

Still, needless to say, I'm not real thrilled about the redundancy I've started to feel in writing this. So In these next few chapters, I'm going to try and climb back out of the rut, do something different, and get on with the story.

That said, I hope you guys enjoy it, and if you don't, aren't afraid to comment on it, or PM me, and tell me so.

Once again, thanks a million to all of you. ^^

End of line.


	18. Arjia

Today, my job is escorting Clu to an obscure location far outside the city; once home to a metropolis of its own, a glowing place of white, and ISOs . . . And programs.

It is the home of something old, something forgotten. Something Clu needs.

The something inspires a flicker of memory. I run through the files I am still capable of accessing, but none of them possess the knowledge I seek. I must be patient.

We cut through the air and the fog, our jets igniting the dimness. Spiraling down, lilting out of the air, we arrive.

Clu, wisely, sends the entourage of guards who he has brought with him out along our perimeter, and begins moving forwards, towards the depths of the remains.

This place is haunting. It is untouched. No effort of reclamation has been made in this once glimmering city. Soaring monoliths of wreckage tangle above us, weaving through the fog.

The sound of my dissatisfaction with this place rolls forth and echoes off the fragments of broken code, coming back to me with demoralizing resonance. Clu smirks.

"Of course it's here," I cannot tell if he is muttering to himself or to me, "of course he would have put it _here_."

His tone is dark and bitter. Clu is angry. He is remembering a time of ISOs and betrayal and false deities_._

_H_e begins moving faster, crossing the ground in long, determined strides, fists clenched at his sides. His footsteps break through chunks of data and the leftovers of beauty with cold, crunching, snapping sounds. They cut the silence along with my own rumbling, echoing off the broken remnants of structure before being lost in the haze.

I see all of this through a profound dimness, worsened by my helmet's screen. Our circuits are the only light.

Slowly, though, so impossibly slowly, things begin to change. I sense it before I see it, and look down.

The fog clinging to the ground has become backlit, swirling in unnatural eddies that do not reflect the actual patterns of the debris beneath it. It swirls over a seeming pool of white light . . .

Coming from the _ground._

The glow steadily increases as we move closer to the city's center.

There, the debris clears. It is open. Empty. The guards reappear form the mist around us.

From the center of this newest location, there emanates a seeping, glowing, white essence. It is not fog, not mist, but streams and eddies as such, floating away into the ruins and the cloud-darkened skies above.

I cannot name it. It is raw, pure energy in the same manner as the sea of Simulation is unfiltered, ebbing data. There is no explanation for it.

_Error._

Yes there is. I just cannot name it. To name it would be disloyal to Clu, to everything he has done for us. False creators, after all, do not deserve credit for good. Or mysteries. Or miracles.

But the word comes to me anyway. It fills up my systems, shoots through my circuits with an eerie rushing of warmth. I have to think it.

_Users._

They seem so forgotten, now, these abandoned tyrants of unlimited power, and all we remember of them is negative and dark. But this . . . this is beautiful in its eeriness, and it speaks to something, some truth I should not remember about the nature of the one who invoked it.

Not that the . . ._false_ Creator probably knew what he was doing when he made it.

That's what users do. They experiment with our world. It is not home to them. Not reality. They twist it, abuse it, enjoying our worship and the malleability of our reality. Then they go.

They leave us. Leave us for long, unpredictable spans, if not forever.

And then everything falls apart.

There is nothing to be had from false gods. Nothing. Only suffering. Only burdens one program cannot bear, but will try to, anyway, in the name of some incomprehensible, irrational urge to impress a being no more perfect than himself. He would die for this cause.

But it does not matter what we have done. The users do not come back. They do not return.

_They cannot . . ._

_NO. _

They can. They simply don't. But it doesn't matter.

_We. Don't. Need. Them._

Clu has proven that.

_. . . No he hasn't._

_NO._

_Yes he has . . ._

_NO._

_NO HE HASN'T- YES HE HAS- __**NO HE**__ - Users. Only the __**Users**__-_

_But He-_

_WARNING: Overload imminent._

_Redirecting-_

I do not like this place. I do not like the theological sludge that it enforces on me for reasons I cannot explain. User thoughts are simply a side effect of it, one which sends invigorating warmth through me each time I surrender . . .

It becomes so difficult not to. I struggle to resist.

_Why are we here?_

What can Clu want from this place that is so full of users, so full of things that are lost to us for better or worse?

_I remember . . ._

No, no I don't. But I do know it. I _feel_ it. There is some old urge, some forgotten, latent protocol that the energy here invokes. Something I am supposed to do. . .

_Something I should have done . . .?_

_REDIRECTING._

I hate this. I hate this process of squelching my own ramblings. It takes fractions upon fractions of seconds, but it is _wrong._ I shouldn't have to. Something in my creation, in my existence, all of it . . . something is _glitched._

_NO. No . . . . I'm perfect. Clu _made_ me perfect . . ._

Perhaps everyone does this. That must be.

_Clu made me _this _way._

I cannot be wrong. . . I simply can't. Not me. Not someone who dispels death with such minute movements of the wrist, with such dexterity and so . . . little . . . feeling. . . .

Not Clu's perfect warrior. Not his soldier, his defender, his righteous executioner. Not the defender and upholder of his perfect city. Not me. I'm being irrational, a symptom of this tainted place. That is all.

_I am in control . . . . ._

_No you're not._

Clu moves towards the light.


	19. Identity

I compile my internalized war entirely in order to watch Clu. My master's actions are infinitely more important than this redundant madness.

I force my conflict back into the depths of me, down where it is free to rage unheeded by anything but the residual aggression of my sound, which becomes minutely softer with its going. I am pleased by its quiet absence.

Clu makes his way to the place from whence the lighted energy is drifting, and bends. He rests one knee against the ground, and removes his disc from his back. He seems perplexed.

Before him, emerging from the blinding swirl of light and energy, is a wide, raised stone. It is intricately carved, each divot and ridge of its surface curling with white, blue, and green; all of them swirling and entwining into one ambient, dancing pattern.

Clu lays his disc down in the center of the platform. It activates, but the blade does not spin. It only glows, throbbing with ethereally powerful energy of its own.

But that is all it does. It is not working. I know it isn't. I do not know how I know, for I cannot remember, but I know it all the same. It is linked with some ancient order, some arcane emergency back-up procedure that has no place in a working system.

Still, this place is special. It is a place which overwhelms me with the sense that I should have come here long, long ago, and yet simultaneously rejects me as I am.

Rinzler was never meant to exist here. I am too upgraded, too changed . . . just as the place itself has been adapted from its original purpose.

This platform, with its twisting patterns and clear view of the sky above, was brought to this system solely for one program, someone from before who has long been lost. Someone who I must never recall, whose forbidden directive still tears at my code like ghost in the structure of my body and the history of my discs.

. . . I _was_ once someone else. Once. And I cannot forget. The echoes remain.

_**ERROR.**_

WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT THIS?

Why does it _matter_ if I was someone else before? Why does this still _haunt me?_ Why, why, why! **THIS IS WRONG.**

Denial is getting me nowhere. With each moment, every change of my environment, of my routine, the whispers of something else, of mercy, or forgotten affections, or users and their orders, the whispers are STILL getting louder. I am fighting myself even now, distracted from Clu and his actions before me. He should have my FULL attention.

It's this place. It is making it even _worse_. Even worse than it has been. Even more debilitating. It is asking me to choose. Asking how long I will continue to fight, asking even as it pulls at memory files, as it sends my hidden initiative into the light.

_I fight . . ._

NO!

No. Not again. Not here. Not now. I refuse.

_**No more.**_

This place can decompile into nothingness, I do not care. I am my _own_ being.

I.

Am.

_**RINZLER.**_

And I am tired of this. I am so, so, tired of it.

I am tired of fighting the leftovers of self, of struggling to understand or to deny, or to remember or forget. The energy here begs me for choice, and I will make it: I am done with matters of identity. Finished.

And I do not care any longer what has to be done in order to make this stop. It has finally, after so many bygone cycles of holding to metaphysical values and indulging in contemplation no more useful than the speech I already deny, ceased to matter.

This is my breaking point.

_I_ am a part of a perfect system, a system requires my ruthlessness and obedience, and not my questioning and attempts at remembrance. This is ALL that is relevant, all that matters.

I am done with ghosts. I am done with places like this. I am done with memory. I am done with feeling. I am done with thinking.

I am here to _serve Clu_. I am here to bear witness to the faulty beginnings of his greater initiative. With the passing of the cycles, the mission of a perfect system has finally been fulfilled. That is the world in which I exist. There is nothing left to achieve, only to maintain, and now, with Clu's inexplicable actions, something new is brewing in its place. What it is will be revealed in time.

But my crisis of identity, regardless, has no place in this new order that he is forming.

What I _will_ do henceforth, and what I _must _do, is to stand beside him and behind him as I always have.

I, Rinzler, am finished with the nagging doubts and wandering thoughts of ghosts. I have been tortured long enough.

Perhaps it is the energy here that has granted me such clarity, Perhaps not. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the Rinzler from before, the other program who I once was, is silenced. He, and all of his connections to this place, to users, to inaccuracy and error. They must go.

And I realize, suddenly, how that is to be achieved.

Thought cannot torture you, or invade you, or mislead you into loops of remembering and forgetting and frustration, if you cease the thoughts themselves.

I see it now. I see what Clu has wanted me to be all along.

There is nothing wrong with being automatic.

I understand.

I feel my eyes falling shut. Internally, I see the flustered patchwork of my systems, of my damaged and overlaid source code, and I see the filters that I am constructing coming into being around my conscious mind. I see the list of file numbers as I recompile, as I store everything where it cannot be reached.

It has taken me 600 cycles of existence to complete this course. 600 cycles of Clu's tweaking and maintaining, manipulating my disc to keep me perfect, to keep the otherness inside of me at bay. But I am stronger than protocol, and in the end, it is only my own decisions that can sustain me . . .

And it is my decision to surrender.

From now on, programming, orders, and protocol are all I will have. I realize that I am allowing myself to be a machine, but I must. I do what is _right._ I have always lived by this rule.

And this, this is who Rinzler was intended to be. The _right_ Rinzler.

_You were free. . ._

I still am. I am making my own choice. I am making the choice that _must_ be made. It is what I have always done.

_I _am _free . . . . . . . . _

This is my last, true thought.

When I open my eyes again, I am not there. There is no persona, only a screen of vision and diagnostics and command lines.

I am pure readiness. I am efficiency; a series of pre-programmed responses that will not change and will not surrender. I am a perfect processor, living homage to the exact procedure of input and output.

A true repurpose.

_I_ am Rinzler.

The input now is vision: my master is being frustrated by his efforts. The actions he is performing are not moving to completion, a glitch in the procedure.

The visual data tells me that he is snatching back his disc, that he is turning to go, that his face is twisted into cold rage.

Sound tells me that a constant and contented sound is humming around me, and that Clu is muttering keywords like "Castor," "holding out," and "bargain."

_Processing-_

_Not-applicable._

This is not directed at me. It is not relevant.

I return to visual analyzation instead. My master is passing me now, moving back towards the outskirts of the former city in which we stand.

_Execute procedure- follow._

I turn and shadow him obediently.

I am waiting for orders.

* * *

End of Part I


	20. I am II: Aftermath

Part II:

Automatic

* * *

Standing. Waiting.

_Alert: io stream (type-audio) detected._

The female voice of the games host breaks through.

"Warning: Illegal weapon use."

_Processing-_

_Keywords: weapon, illegal._

_Processing-_

The program in the green standard issue uniform is in possession of explosives.

_Analyzing-_

_Identify weapon (type- explosive): Light grenade._

_Checking "light grenade" against acceptable utensils for (game designation- lightcycles) competition:_

_. . ._

_Weapon designation "light grenade" is unacceptable-_

_Illegal weapon located._

_Processing-_

_Identify perpetrator: Combatant 4_

_Processing-_

_Command protocol for rogue combatants: _

_-Isolate perpetrator (combatant 4)_

_-execute command: kill-9_

_-return to original coordinates._

The gate opens.

_Execute Rogue Combatant protocol._

I reach for my baton.

_Lightcycle: activated._

. . .

_Executing- stage 1, stage 2._

_. . ._

There is no exhilaration in the speed, in the grace with which I am flying across the seeming frozen liquid surface of the grid. There is no surging in my circuits, and nothing exquisite in the swooping curves of my movement as I avoid the incoming grenades.

But, there_ is_ focus. There is a narrowing of every sense, every stream of input, into the singe output of pursuit. There are the unfurling stages of isolation and deresolution. There is the sound, and the sight, of a living being shattering against an orange light ribbon. There is the mandatory and automated retreat.

_Command protocol fulfilled. Returning (designation: Rinzler) program to holding zone._

There is standing, waiting for orders. For purpose. There is observation.

_Processing-_

_Processing-_

This is all I am.

* * *

Author's note: So, here we stand at the beginning of the second stage of Rinzler's life, one which I intend to make much more complicated for him, muahaha. What do you think?

Now, once again, I just want to say thanks again to all of you for sticking with me this far. You seem to be enjoying this, and that makes it infinitely more meaningful for me to write it. I'd be nowhere without my readers!

On the subject of me getting nowhere, actually, I'd like to throw in some extra thanks to Missbroadwayboundfanfic for some EXCELLENT tips on characters, writer's block, and this chapter. Your advice is probably the only reason I'm writing this right now instead of pacing my kitchen and mentally screaming bloody murder at Rinzler . . . again. XD

Also, thanks again to all of you who are not only reading, but reviewing. You're all completely awesome. Still. XD

That said, I'm going to shut up now. Hope you all enjoy part II!

End of line.


	21. Intimidator

_Analyzing: io stream (type-audio):_

"I do wonder, Clu, what the purpose is in this little . . . _endeavor_ of yours? Not that it's any of _my_business, of course, but what you're asking, well, I do need to be certain that I'm making the . . . _right_ choice in regards to this alliance.

"It's a matter of self preservation, I'm sure you understand. I need to be certain that you are still my optimal option, so to speak. And if users are somehow a concern in this, as your continued interest in the _legend _of the I/O platform would suggest . . . well, you can see where my concern lies, can't you, Clu?"

_Keywords: purpose, endeavor, Clu, deal, self preservation, optimal, option, users, I/O_

_Analyzing: io steam (type-visual):_

Castor's peaky smile never leaves his face as he speaks, only fades in and out from the perimeter of his mouth as his glances flash in the corners of his eyes.

He is white, Castor. He is gray. He is pallid and thin with his shoulders continuously thrown back in what can only be processed as arrogance.

_Processing input-_

The first time I tailed my master into this room, Castor was nervous. Frightened. I could see it in his movements and hear it as he spoke, hear it in his choice of quivering words.

_Processing-_

But Castor is not afraid today.

_Alert: priority one data- io stream (type- audio, visual) from (designation- Clu):_

My master stares at Castor. His gaze is intent, but his features maintain a cool neutrality.

He says my name.

_Redirecting-_

_Response protocol: full attention_

I am aware of the physical action that takes hold of me, of my head snapping in my masters direction, of the sharp angle of the chin of my helmet nearly grazing my chest and meeting my shoulder as I pivot without lifting my gaze.

Clu looks up and stares through my helmet, and then turns back to his impertinent ally with a smile flickering in the movements of his mouth.

"You've met Rinzler, haven't you, Castor?"

Castor glances at me.

_Processing visual input-_

_Analysis (Castor program): Distaste, fear._

Clu continues:

"He's my best, how should I put it . . . '_personalized'_ program."

_Processing-_

"But do you know what really makes him great?"

Castor looks back to Clu. He leans forward in his chair to intensify his next words.

"He doesn't talk back."

_Processing-_

Castor's expression falls. His gaze seek me once again. I sense Clu's eyes as well.

_Visual/audio output analysis of performed actions (Clu): Intimidation tactics- references: Rinzler program-Response protocol: comply._

My head turns to meet the nervous eyes, and I am aware of an increased rumbling from the confines of my chest. The colorless features of Castor meld into a new expression.

_Analysis (Castor program): understanding, threat detection._

_Performance analysis (Rinzler program) to Response Protocol (Intimidation): 100% effective- Store file (memory) for later reference._

Satisfied, I return to ready position: my head angled towards the floor, my shoulders locked down.

_Ready position standards:_

_-height of head does not exceed that of proximal superiors_

_-open hands_

_-maintained full-action tension in all limbs_

Meanwhile, Clu, still leaning forward with an elbow propped casually on his knee, is smiling at Castor.

"Now," he asks, "what was it you were saying?"


	22. Unfiltered

_Memory evaluation at 75%._

_io stream(type-audio, sensory): _

"What are you searching for, sir?"

_Voice identification: Jarvis_

_Analyzing-_

_Analysis (Jarvis program): hesitance, curiosity, distaste(mild)_

"Bugs."

_Voice identification: Clu_

_Analysis (Clu): Irritation, dismissal_

"And. . . he has to be in stand-by?"

_Processing-_

The sound of movement betrays Clu as he turns to face his servant.

"Yes."

_Analysis (Clu): Finality._

There is a long pause.

As Clu moves through my source code, I find that I am momentarily aware of myself as I have not been for an immeasurable span of time.

My entire system maps itself out before my sleeping mind, the layers of code and compacted files forming an intricate network of being. In a few places, it is flashing with white. Other strings are orange, familiar and correct. Still more are yellow.

"He has to be at least partially active for the code to be manipulated."

_Analysis (Clu): occupied, acquiescing, patient, informative_

He is correct. I cannot maintain order, nor the complete detachment which stand-by mode normally brings with such continuous activity as my long overdue full-diagnostic entails.

_Memory evaluation at 78%_

It is a slow process, full analysis, one made slower by Jarvis's interjections.

"What's that?"

There is a sigh from Clu.

"An encoded filter."

"Why?"

_Processing-_

I am aware of a change being made, a lifting somewhere.

"When he wakes up, I'll show you."

**. . .**

_Voice identification: Clu_

"Rinzler, run a diagnostic for me on your emotional centers."

_Processing-_

_Initiating-_

_Running-_

_WARNING WARNING WARNING_

_Alert: physical systems failure_

_io stream (sensory, visual, audio):_

My knees impact the floor as I collapse, sending splitting pain to my sensory processors. Clu watches in satisfied boredom while Jarvis recoils.

I cannot control my own reactions.

_Alert: priority filter removed- Overload imminent._

My systems scramble to combat the inexplicable weight that has lodged itself in my chest, my hand flying up reflexively to clutch at my armor plated torso.

It is to no avail. I am still aware of a massive, aching, throbbing void that has just consumed my core. It has no true name, it is too complex. Amidst the heaviness are aspects of loss, as well as betrayal, hatred, abandonment, rage, longing, sorrow, horror, and shame.

Mostly, though, there is all consuming sense that I have been physically hollowed out from the inside; and that somehow, despite there seeming to be nothing in me _to_ break, the sensation that I am shattering . . . that I am simultaneously ripping into a hundred different directions.

There is an appalling noise ripping through the air around me that I cannot identify at first beyond the racket of my own cycling and the scrambling of my systems to restore the filter I so desperately require. It is a sound of utter and complete agony, of something broken and still breaking. It is guttural, unfiltered, unrefined, and uncontrolled.

It is coming from me.

I can feel it. I can feel it tearing out of my throat with such force that it is breaking my body's smooth pixels with its passing.

I am screaming.

I am screaming out of rage, aggression in every tone. Rage against the false creator and the innumerable others of his kind. Against the ISOs. Against my own disastrous collapse and automated confinement.

I am screaming for vengeance.

I am screaming in horror. Horror of each and every memory that I can access, and even more so for those I cannot. I am revolted by the knowing that I have done things which can neither be rectified, nor even acknowledged.

I am screaming in devastation, in misery, in yearning and desperation. I am calling wordlessly for someone to return and save me . . . someone whose existence is an exact compliment to my own.

I am screaming because my system has to release the pain in some manner; because if I do not unleash the weight that sits inside of me, dragging me to my knees and refusing to release me, I am certain to be crushed by it entirely.

I am screaming because I am both temporarily blinded by the arrival of unfiltered light in my eyes, and because I am suddenly in error, my frazzled system momentarily releasing my helmet. I am not supposed to retract it. . .

But then it is over. I find myself doubled over on my hands and knees, grimacing at my own reflection in the polished black surface of this room's floor.

My own face is a foreign thing.

My forehead appears to me as a near solid sheet of hair, hair which sticks to the skin because it has been flattened by the constant pressure of the helmet for so many cycles. My other features are difficult to discern past the distortion of my expression, a grimace which only partially fades as agony gives way to exhaustion and defeat.

I can see, though, that I am pale. I do not look healthy. There is a lack of color in my flesh so profound I can discern it even in_ this_ distorted, accidental mirror.

Still worse than the pallor, however, is the sight of my alarmingly dilated eyes. I cannot see their color in the floor's surface, but I can see the look in them. It is hollow and empty of anything but suffering that I cannot quite explain, but whose existence I cannot possibly deny.

The eyes say too much for denial. They beg too loudly for the mercy of deresolution to be ignored. They are screaming at me. Screaming in desperation that something is horribly, horribly wrong . . .

And then the visage disappears. My helmet activates once again.

Clu is the reason. He is suddenly beside me on the floor, teetering on the balls of his feet as he re-establishes the filter whose absence has caused this abysmal lapse.

My vision begins to fade.

_Command detected: reboot, erase file (memory) for previous (amount-5) nanocycles._

_Processing-_

_Processing-_

_File erased._

_Commence reboot._

**. . .**

_Reboot complete._

_Results of full diagnostic (external) by (designation-Clu) for bugs in Rinzler program: Negative._

_Analysis (Rinzler program): operation at 100%- Return to normal processes._

_. . ._

_. . ._

_io stream (type-audio, visual) detected:_

"Still curious?"

Clu glances at Jarvis, who is standing beside him.

_Analyzing-_

"No sir."

_Analyzing-_

"I always do what's best for them, Jarvis."

Clu's servant nods to him, but says nothing, a notable rarity for the program.

I assess the event.

_. . ._

_Evaluating-_

It is a waste of energy.

_Final assessment- Input (type- audio, visual) evaluation for exchange between (designations- Jarvis, Clu): non-applicable to Rinzler program._

_Command protocol: non-applicable data-_

_-Ignore._

_Executing protocol: Maintain ready position, await further orders and/or relevant data input._

_. . ._

_. . ._

_. . ._

_Processing-_

I wait for something to happen. Nothing does.

_Processing-_

There is nothing notable to review.

It has been an uneventful shift.

_Processing-_

_Processing-_

_. . ._

_Processing-_


	23. Catalyst

_Alert-_

Clu is watching me intently.

_io stream (type-audio, visual):_

He is watching me, and watching the window. He is lost in the rain of unrefined power that is streaming and dribbling down the pane of it as we fly over the city.

He appears to be . . .

_Assessing-_

_. . ._ Searching for something.

_Processing-_

_Processing-_

_Evaluation: incomplete. Further input required._

I cannot calculate his meaning.

He stares on, regardless. Jarvis is by his side, glancing from the control tablet in his hand to his master and back every few nano or so.

We are returning from a flyover, a lap through the city's airspace which Clu sometimes makes to inspire his citizens and monitor the conditions of the system. He does not rule from afar.

_Evaluating-_

But his mind is elsewhere today.

_Evaluating-_

_Evaluation inconclusive: maintain._

I do. I am occupied by the task of flying my master's patrol vessel, standing below and in front of him at the helm. Clu is a reflection in the window before me.

_Executing flight maneuver: hold steady. Maintain speed, altitude. _

_Estimated distance to location ("home"): 18 . . ._

_ALERT-_

My processing is disrupted.

_Detection: abnormal behavior in (designation-Clu)._

_Redirecting- maintain pilot functions (secondary)._

My input focus narrows to Clu, who has just shot upright in his chair from his formerly languid position, the knee upon which he had propped his arm straightening along with the leg as whole as he swings around to face the helm.

_Processing-_

_Evaluation of io stream (type-visual) for (Clu): reactive, alert, introspective._

_Evaluation (Jarvis program): Surprised, confused._

_. . ._

_Secondary io stream (type-audio) detected from (Clu):_

"The rain."

_Processing-_

"Rinzler!"

_Alert: _

_Redirecting-_

"I need your disc."

_Response protocol initiating-_

_Stabilizing airship-inputting autopilot data to ship controls-_

I proceed to the elevated platform on which Clu is positioned, drawing to a collected halt before him.

_Presentation protocol: _

_-maintain elevation lower than that of superior_

_- non-combative positioning_

_-deactivated weapon_

I sink to one bended knee at my master's feet. I remove my discs gently, but swiftly, and present them to him on flattened palms.

He takes the single unit eagerly in his hand, and it flickers to life. An unfamiliar projection of a face flickers above it for a moment before my own helmeted visage takes its place.

_Io stream (type-visual) for (Clu) regarding disc behavior: dissatisfaction (mild), apparent recollection (negative)_

"Hmphh."

A stream of memories open up to his will in the space above the disc, each flickering by at accelerated rates and regulated intervals until he obtains the one which he seeks.

_Alert: primary backup (identity disc) removed- Precautionary file (memory) storage redirecting to central storage systems._

Clu watches.

The blue and gray shaded, flickering image is preceded by a red-flashing priority-one memory alert, but the file opens itself to the sole being who is permitted access to it.

_Warning: potentially corruptible data, storage center (identity disc) not found-_

In watching my own memory, I am in violation.

_Evaluation: External deletion (Clu) of following data necessary . . ._

Clu will take care of it.

_Processing: io stream (type-visual, audio) from priority-one memory file-_

The memory unfolds as a series of combat images. The perspective displays the derezzing of a member of the black guard, followed by the inexplicable examination of two incongruous identity discs, one in each hand.

_Evaluating-_

My discs.

_Evaluation: memory-file portrayal of secondary weapon obtainment_

_Processing . . ._

The view changes, the discs spinning away into the peripheral, held in ready-position. One remains visible in the bottom left corner, the other is drawn back behind the viewer's head where the visual cannot reach.

_Processing . . ._

There is another guard in the memory's focus area, one who soon falls, tumbling out of sight beneath a disc's swipe. The focus does not follow his deresolution, but redirects once again. Two figures fill the image.

Clu watches intently, evaluating. I do so as well.

_Evaluation: program designation in priority-one memory file: Clu . . ._

_. . ._

_Identity of secondary person: unknown_

_. . ._

_Processing-_

_. . ._

_Secondary person identified: Designation- Flynn._

_WARNI- Disregard._

_Checking command protocol . . ._

_Threat assessment must be completed and identified before file erasure in all cases Concerning (Designation- Clu)._

_Protocol identified:_

_-Process any and all objects of high-priority for (Designation- Clu)._

_- Erase corruptible data upon completion of relevance evaluations_

_. . ._

_Processing-_

Clu stands over (designation- Flynn), who attempt retreat by crawling across the ground weakly, primarily on his forearms. Clu hinders him with periodic kicks. In response, the memory's view focuses on Clu's back, and accelerates towards it.

The visual becomes a blur of black armor and bright circuits, and the equilibrium of the image changes. Clu falls to the floor with his assailant on his back, arms wrapped around him. The viewer's discs are still in hand, however, inhibiting his grip.

_WARNING: TRAITOROUS BEHAVIOR DETECTED- SOURCE: PERSONAL MEMORY FILE OF RINZLER PROGRAM._

_. . . . . ._

_Processing implications . . ._

_ALERT._

_Reevaluation shows "highly" corruptible data-_

_Processing emergency protocol-_

_Emergency deletion initiating-_

For a moment I am forgetting as quickly as I am inputting, and there is a void in the flow of information as the dangerous portion of the memory passes. When it recommences in my processing stream, it is at a moment in which the vision is filled entirely by the descent of a disc, which is viewed over the rise of a shoulder.

_Processing-_

The memory is being viewed in a prone position, the viewer partially rolled onto their right side.

The descending disc passes the shoulder's rise, and imbeds itself almost in entirety into the upper side of the viewer's torso. The image turns to static and streams of broken data, and temporarily disappears entirely.

Then it returns partially, still disrupted, but generally viewable. Sparks fly across it, the viewer's vision fading in and out. The disc is removed. Clu's figure moves rapidly out of view. The viewer is left on the ground . . .

_Alert:_

_io stream (type-audio) from (designation-Clu) evaluated: "The rain" confirmed as reference to event in priority-one memory._

The viewer does indeed bear witness to rain. It is just beginning to fall.

_Processing . . ._

Clu suddenly snaps the file away, finished. The gesture is disconcertingly abrupt. The disc becomes dark.

_Processing-_

He smiles to himself.

_Detecting Io stream (type-audio):_

"Perfect."

* * *

Author's Note:

If you're mildly confused by why rain is so exciting to Clu, you'll find out in the next chapter. This is one of those part-one of a single event chapters, like Arjia/Identity, and it's supposed to be that way. I just don't feel up to typing the second half tonight, whereas normally I post these things all at once. I know, how lazy of me. XD

But, yeah. I just wanted to let you guys know. Thanks again for reading!

End of line.


	24. Reawakening

_Compiling elements-_

I am standing in Clu's central chamber.

_-io stream (typre- audio, visual, sensory)_

I am listening to Jarvis's questions. I am waiting for orders.

_Evaluating-_

I am hearing an answer. An answer which runs me through.

No.

No.

Impossible.

No.

_Processing-_

No . . .

_Evaluating . . ._

I am turning my head. I am turning it in a series of broken, neatly separated increments which elapse so quickly that I am certain that, altogether, the grinding augmentation of burning shorts and jolt movements appear as a single element . . . as one twist. As one slow and gliding arc, one predatory pivot.

As one. Fatal. Turn.

**. . . . .**

_One milicycle earlier:_

He enters the room in mildness. The program, nameless and dark haired and tired, comes with lowered head and docile eyes. He comes with his arms crossed defensively over his chest, walks with the lowered head of respect and chagrin, and moves swiftly, quietly, and meekly to present his master with his disc.

He speaks.

_Processing io stream (type-audio)_

"I've come to request a repurpose, sir. I-" He goes on. Explains extraneous circumstance. I don't hear.

_Keywords: repurpose, request_

Clu smiles.

"Of course," he said.

" Come with me."

_Alert._

**. . . . .**

Clu has never required a room for the repurposing procedure before. Adaptation of original source code normally require only a disc to serve as an access point, as a place to store the upgrade. Clu normally does it "on the spot." The willing feel it happen, looked unnerved, and leave resplendent a moment later. The unwilling undesirables Clu has the mercy to save usually scream. They leave hollow, but complete. Accurate.

I've seen it.

And it simply doesn't require this. I have never seen him remove any of these patrons to a separate location. Not in (_Calculating-) _798 cycles of existence.

_Processing-_

This is new.

_Processing io stream (type-audio visual)_

Clu take the program downstairs; takes him deep. He takes him to a dim room sharpened by slivers and gashes of blue light. He brings him to a place nearly against the far wall, the only wall against which control panels do not wink.

He asks the program to sit down on a great slap, cold and metallic.

He does.

He sits silently, obediently, naive and unaware. Clu nods to a medical accessory program beside him. She is a figure which appears as if from the walls themselves, a strip of black fabric across her mouth and nose, a shadow in a dark space.

She is accompanied by two others like her, a male and female. They are the only others in the room aside from Jarvis, myself, my master, and the program. Their circuits are pale, pale orange.

_Processing-_

_. . ._

Disruption:

_Alert: potential weapon detected_

The female accessory, tiny, frail, and marked by long hair which she has twisted into a single, dark rope and slung over her shoulder, withdraws something.

_Evaluating-_

_Checking memory banks-_

_Object identification: Unknown._

The thing in her hand is long and nearly invisible in its slenderness, but glints like metal in the seeping glow of her circuits. It extends from her hand like a blade from a baton, her fingers twisted dexterously around a vial at its near end.

_Cross-checking identification . . ._

_Assessing potential uses-_

_Processing-_

_processing-_

_Evaluation: (possible) Medical injection tool_

She moves towards the on the table with the injection raised, the iridescent, vaguely blue tinted solution inside the vial portion of it swirling in time with her motion.

_Identification (unknown liquid): un-refined power_

Her companions each move to the table on which the program sits, clasping their hands gently around his forearms. The accessory draws up behind him, checking her disquieting tool as she does.

_Evaluation (female medical accessory program): focused, dull, unfeeling_

_Evaluation (Unknown program): nervous, frightened, confused, uncertain_

The program begins to struggle. He tries to turn, to see the female he senses behind him. Clu watches, removed. He stands to the side. Jarvis is less comfortable. His face is alarmed.

We watch as the program glimpses the object being held up behind him. We watch him cry out, watch him thrash uncontrollably, watch as he is restrained by the medical programs, still panting and whimpering and stuttering as the male presses one palm into the back of the program's head and forces it to lower.

We watch as the female presses the injection into him, plunging its metal extension into the back of the program's neck till it is so deeply immersed in him that the base of the vial is resting against his flesh. Her intricately wrapped fingers tighten around that vial. They press against some mechanism, and the already grimacing, gasping program begins to scream.

His body becomes rigid. He throws his head back and quakes violently, shrieking in agony. The burning of un-refined power courses through him, turning his circuits to blinding streaks and pinpoints with no distinction, only brightness and heat. He is disappearing in his own glow.

And then, suddenly, the glow snaps back into nothingness. The program goes dark.

He collapses, falling limp in the medics' grips, utterly blackened. Every circuit on his body is dead and smoking.

_. . . . . ._

_Evaluating . . . . . . ._

_Event identification: power surge (debilitating) from injection of un-refined power (liquid)-_

_Assessing ramifications . . ._

The medical programs bend over him. The accessory removes the injection tool, extracting it with an uneven jerk from the reluctant grip of his body.

Everyone waits.

He does not derezz.

Clu approaches him.

_Alert._

_Situation assessment: uncertain, proceed with caution_

Jarvis glances at me.

_Evaluation (Jarvis program): unnerved, uncomfortable, confused, curious, seeking explanation_

I turn my head in his direction, returning his stare. I don't know, either.

_io stream (type-audio):_

Sound rumbles up from my chest.

Jarvis looks away.

Before us, Clu is removing the program's disc from his back. The medical programs are still holding his body in a slump. Clu activates the disc. He looks to the dark haired female beside him.

"Patient is fully nonoperational, sir," she says.

_Processing-_

_Ramification assessment complete:_

The program's systems have entirely shut down. Each and every one. The surge from the direct injection of un-refined power has wiped them out. He is effectively dead.

However, the power itself is the reason he is not actually so.

_I remember._

The program before me cannot operate, cannot function. He is slowly decompiling, his mind and protocol breaking up inside of him.

_I remember the rain._

But as he decompiles, the un-refined power inside of him seeps through his circuits, permeates his being. There is too much of it.

The program has become a simple, volatile container of raw energy. He couldn't physically die if he wanted to. There is just _too much._ It's holding him together, pure and overwhelming.

_Processing-_

_. . ._

_. . . ._

_Praise be to Clu._

He is going to put him back together. Clu is going to take the broken-open source code of the program and fix him from the ground up. There will be no upgrading, no patching. He'll be entirely new.

The contents of his disc rez into being above Clu's hands, unfurling like a solar sail into an incomprehensible network of overlapping source code, upgrades, files, filters, and thoughts. There seem to megabytes upon megabytes of information filling up the air, the whole projection consuming a space twice as wide as I am tall. The data glows in the same ambient green the program's circuits once were.

Clu reaches up into it, digging for patterns in the midst's of one's and zero's, and begins.

**. . . . .**

_The Present:_

_Compiling elements-_

I am standing in Clu's central chamber.

_-io stream (typre- audio, visual, sensory)_

I am listening to Jarvis's questions. I am waiting for orders.

_io stream (type-audio) from (designation- Jarvis program):_

"The power surge was brilliant, sir. Knocking out the program's systems in order to . . ." he struggles to think of the word, but cannot.

"Decompile him," Clu says.

Jarvis nods emphatically.

"Of course. _That_."

He pauses as if to brush the lapse aside, and continues:

"But it _was_ excellent. How _did," _he emphasizes the word in an attempt at flattery, dripping awe into the sound, "you think of it?"

_Evaluating-_

I am hearing an answer.

Though his tone suggests that Jarvis's attempts to curry favor are lost on him, Clu still seems satisfied with himself as he replies.

"Rinzler reminded me," he says, leaning back in his chair, "I'd forgotten. It was raining that day."

Jarvis has to think about this for a moment before he pieces together the reference which I myself cannot comprehend.

_Processing-_

When Cu sees the understanding in Jarvis's face, however, he smiles. He nearly laughs. He shakes his head, shakes it with a lowered chin, lost in memories. His eyes are cold, hardened, angry. The smile is not friendly.

"You know, I'd always wondered why he wouldn't just die," he rumbles. His voice matches his expression, cold, scathing.

_Evaluating-_

_Evaluating-_

_Evalu-_

My processing skids to a halt.

_What did he just say?_

No.

No.

Impossible.

No.

_Processing-_

_. . ._

No . . .

But I see it. I see the rain. I see the rain I am not supposed to remember seeing. I remember the program, dead without deresolution, lying on the table. I remember his source code unfurling in the air, his entire self exposed and fluttering in the static of a projection, ready to manipulate.

Filters.

Clu put filters in him.

Files. . .

Clu deleted them. Hid them. Destroyed them. Silenced his memories.

_No. . ._

Commands. So, so many commands.

_Processing applicability of observations for (designation-Rinzler program)-_

_Processing-_

NO. No no.

I look. I look for confirmation, for explanation. I turn, I force myself.

There is no protocol for this.

_You_

_Wanted_

_me_

_dead . . ._

I would have been. The rain saved me. Not Clu.

NO.I don't believe it.

_No._

Turning. . .

_Evaluating-_

This is the slowest swivel of the head I have ever performed.

I am turning my head. I am turning it in a series of broken, neatly separated increments which elapse so quickly that I am certain that, altogether, the grinding augmentation of burning shorts and jolt movements appear as a single element . . . as one twist. As one slow and gliding arc, one predatory pivot.

_Tell me the truth._

This momentous twist is greeted only by a gesture of dismissal by Clu's hand, as though I were responding to the mention of my name alone. As if don't understand.

That is enough.

_. . .You KNOW the truth._

One. Fatal. Turn.

He destroyed it. Clu destroyed it. My perfect processing. It's all stopped short. One thought. One thought and a twist of the neck, and it is all broken.

_I am broken._

I am aware. I understand.

_No. . . automated . . ._

Not anymore.

Not like this.

Not while knowing.

_I was supposed to die._

But I didn't.

I.

Didn't.

The rain saved me.

And Clu re-made me.

_Of course he did._

. . .

He didn't have a choice.


	25. Death of a Soldier

The program who was subjected to experimental repurpose is now a prototype soldier.

He is also about to die.

We are mid-combat, and I am unarmed. Still, he stumbles, reels, tumbles backwards as my foot impacts his chest. His back hits the wall.

I approach.

I can see my reflection in his blackened visor . . . death's imminent deliverance written into every line of my body. He doesn't stand a chance.

Still, he tries again. He charges at me, head on, staff held at the ready. He plunges it towards my chest.

I don't even have to think. So simple. So inferior.

I wrench the weapon from his hand.

I turn the staff around in my palm, and plunge it into his chest. His body spasms violently as the shock equipped weapon impales him.

I like this. He dies slowly.

The prototype falls to his knees, still jiggling and snapping on the end of the weapon. I let him fall. As he descends, the staff slices its way through his chest, up to his neck, through his chin . . .

A jerk of my arm is all it takes, then. The staff's edge transects his neck, and the prototype bursts into a shower of dripping pixels as his head begins to separate from his body.

I let the weapon fall into the glowing pile of his remains, and turn to look through the observation window above me.

_Look at me, Clu._

He's so perfectly dismissive, standing up there, shrugging away this event as an understandable risk of alpha testing this new breed of soldier.

_Look at what I've done._

Rinzler. Broken Rinzler. The walking dead. The accident.

He can prototype as many soldiers as he likes, it won't change the truth. He can't make one better than me.

_Look how perfect you've made me. Look at the potential I have._

He has no idea. No idea of the complexity of his creation, what I'm capable of doing. Not yet. But he will, and so will I. I can feel it.

_Look, Clu. _

Something is changing.

_Look at what you've done._

* * *

End of part II

* * *

Author's note: FINALLY! I've been consciously working towards this point in Rinzler's development for the last 17 chapters, and now, at last, we're here.

BUT, here's the bad news: I'm heading out for spring break, and the soonest I can guarantee I'll have time to update again is (if I can remember without looking at my calendar, that is...) the 25th. . . so you guys won't get to see why I'm so excited about this for awhile. :(

I'm hoping, however, that this chapter was teaser enough to keep you all interested while I'm on hiatus, and that you all enjoyed it despite its shortness. (As always, feel free to let me know via review, as I can still check those on my phone as I travel. ^^)

Aaaand: that's all. XD Thank you so much (again) to all of you for reading and for your fantastic reviews! You guys keep this fun for me, and help me to improve my writing to boot!

Oh, and for those to whom it applies: Have a great spring break! XD

End of line.


	26. First Strike

Part III:

Devotions

* * *

It comes in stages.

It begins subtly.

The collapse of perfection into organized anarchy is a slow and inescapable process.

I can see it unfolding eight stories below me on the city streets just like a planned procession. I can see finality emblazoned by bars of light on sweeping architecture, a frame for the demise of a way of life and the people who cling to it.

_I've se-_

_-Accessing memory file—_

_Warning: unauthorized data transf—_

This is an automated response. Filtration in action.

I don't need it.

I've learned enough in the tiring passage of the cycles to see around my own limitations to the essences of what I seek. I don't need to open the unreachable file itself to get the core of it. I _know_ what there is to be gleaned, that the unfinished thought is this:

_I've seen this before_.

I've seen this process.

Eventually, power turns to greed. To overextension. It breaks through its own safety nets. Armies are built. "Initiatives" are begun behind closed doors, and in the far off pile of refuse once called Arjia City. People start to disappear. Fear becomes the binding that holds a system together.

Fear, and the devotion of fanatics to their leader.

I see them down there, milling on the streets. I see them through the pane of a window, a single source of blue-green, filtered light in my dark quarters. Programs. Civilians. The fearful believers.

I see the Black Guard prodding and herding them away, clearing the streets of all but commuters, and pressing those onto mass transport crafts where they can. The streets must be kept clear. How else can the disused, the directionless, the strays, be sorted out with any level of efficiency?

That is the first sign. The rejects.

Clu built a perfect system for these programs, but it doesn't need them.

A perfect system simply does not require nearly the same attention as an imperfect one. It doesn't require builders. It doesn't require active monitors. It works on its own. It begs only minimal maintenance to thrive, doesn't need living programs to take care of it. It only requires…

Requires….

. . .

_It requires someone to use it._

My system sends error messages and warnings across my eyes. It doesn't like the barely implied suggestion of users brought up by my analysis of the world outside my window.

But it doesn't matter. It's still true.

Clu designed a perfect system, and now all it needs is programs who will use it. It needs a purpose.

There.

Truth.

The end result of this truth, however, is that those once useful programs now wander the streets without use; discarding their discs or losing them in some unconscious, futile attempt to forget what meaning feels like, to escape from the nagging of a solid backup. They become the strays. Then they, like the broken, the glitching, and the subversive, are collected and eliminated. Discarded.

They disappear. Some go to the games . . . Yes.

Yes, I have most definitely seen this before.

Yes, I see it even now, unfolding outside my window. See it all. The separation. The collection. The beginnings.

I can see the way the programs below acquiesce because they are becoming uncertain, because they are learning, slowly, that the games or disappearance in a recognizer's clutches are the only results of protest. Or, because they see their leader in the Black Guard's actions. Because they love him. Because they trust him. Just as I do. Just as I must. Just as I was made to.

_I serve Clu._

Just like them.

This is always how it starts.

* * *

Author's note: Don't ever let me go on vacation again (or type while still ON vacation...) because, apparently, if I'm away too long, SOME CHARACTERS *cough* RINZLER*cough* get STUBBORN in my absence and then DON'T COME BACK TO ME WHEN I NEED THEM. ARGGGGGGG!

Anyway, I sincerily hope you guys still got something out of this, and I'll be attempting to bring you more action and intrigue in the next chapters . . . just as soon as I get Rinzler to cooperate.

End of line.


	27. The Stray

I vaguely remember a concept of something... something called an "animal."

I understand the word better in this moment than I have since the first time I heard it, wherever that was, as I look down on the roaring spectators below.

I know it's true.

Animals are exactly what they're behaving like.

Starving, mindless animals. Clu ought to throw them something to consume before they start in on each other.

. . . Then again . . .

No.

They've already started.

They're just letting me do the work.

They are screaming, chanting. They make my name pulse through the air like energy in a circuit, stomping their feet against the floor each time they collectively pause for breath. They want to see me win.

Already, they are consuming my opponent. Consuming him with their eyes, their watching. They are fueling themselves with the thought of his certain, graphic death. They are eager, ravenous, waiting for the pieces of him to hit the floor with the glorious clatter I know so well. They are waiting. They can't stand the anticipation of the work I will do here.

Yes, it _is_ work.

They receive all the benefit of watching another of their kind die, while I am the one who must find the focus to ignore him before he does. The one who's energy will be used, whose talent will be wasted.

They will feast.

But I will fight.

. . . Still, I don't mind.

Another word I can't explain, but which I have known for so long it's become a piece of me, explains this.

The word is "bloodlust."

The crowd feels it too, this bloodlust. They surge and scream in the throes of it. But they don't know. They have no idea.

They don't realize how it can _burn_.

They can't even imagine.

My circuits are scalding me from the inside. My systems are humming in my ears, my own cycling a roar in the tight enclosure of my helmet. On the outside, the sound of me is filling up the space for yet another "final round" of disc wars, reverberating off the solid liquid walls as a warning to my opponent of what is to come.

_I love this._

They think they know, but they aren't the ones listening to him, watching his darting eyes behind his visor, feeling the electricity of victory in the air.

I do.

I feel all of this, see it, as I look on my white opponent.

He is scared. He clings to his disc so tightly it seems his fingers should shatter. Holds it like a shield. He doesn't release it. He doesn't want to encourage me. He holds back, hoping that I'll be merciful instead of bored by his performance.

This is a round he knows he cannot win.

But I _want_ tofight him. I want to see him _try._

_Challenge me, program . . ._

He can sense what I cannot say aloud.

"Please," he speaks.

"Please."

I step towards him. I draw one disc. Then the other. The heat of weaponry burns my palms, sends a surge up through my fingertips and my arms, a shot of hot energy straight to my chest. The entire world refocuses, narrows down till it is only this arena, this platform, this opponent.

He looks at me.

He begs.

"I'm not a fighter," he says, "I'm not. I'm here by luck, not skill. Please, I can't fight you."

A jumble of responses shoots through me, layers upon layers of words and their echoes bouncing through my systems. A hundred phrases I could retort with if I wanted to.

Out of the mess of it, I gather one response. I will not speak it aloud, but he will understand it all the same if he is clever.

_Yes you can . . ._

I think it at him, my own words a snarl inside my head, hoping he understands.

_. . . You just can't win._

But he doesn't hear me. Isn't clever after all.

Instead, he keeps begging, keeps boring me. The spectators shriek at him, something I am only vaguely aware of. My focus is now elsewhere.

"I'm not even supposed to be here!"

Desperation. His hands thrown up into the air in a moment of weakness, of stupidity, as he shouts. I take my first shot. It grazes his side.

He screams again and nearly buckles, barely avoiding the ricochet as my disc returns, a wicked orange spark which I snatch back from the air. Again, its energy races through me. My cycling accelerates, and I can feel my chest rising and falling more quickly in response. I can't contain myself.

I hurl the other disc at him as he recovers, a hand at his injured side. It cuts across his shoulder. I want to see him retaliate, but he only yelps again and staggers away.

_Fight back, program._

I hate it when they do this . . .

_Why won't you try?_

He looks back at me, terror in his green eyes.

"Please! No! I'm just an accessory program! _I can't do this!_"

My disc flies back, bouncing off the wall. Its velocity knocks him sideways, down to the floor.

"My disc _broke,_ I'm not a stray!" He says, looking up at me from the transparent floor of the platform,  
"I was going to get it fixed, I swear! I didn't discard it, please, I-"

He rolls then, twisting out of the way just as my suddenly airborne body comes down where he had been a moment before, landing in a crouch.

I like the flying sensation of such twisting leaps. I like the way it feels to come down again, so even, so centered on my own feet. I like to see the looks on their faces.

He is giving me that look, horror and awe and distrust all rolled into one, as he scrambles back to his feet.

Now, he sees his own futility. At last, survival takes hold of him.

The bloodlust rises in us both.

He takes his disc in both hands, and rushes at me, hurtling his weapon downward towards my own crouched figure.

I defect him.

It's easy.

But we are engaged, now. He realizes now that my stance was one of readiness, and slashes in desperation as I duck and twist away from him. It's a fight at last.

_Finally._

We dance, whirling around one another, discs meeting in showers of sparks, our private, personal little war raging above the crowd, driving them mad.

I weave in and out of his blows for awhile like this, allow him time. Time to learn my movements, my methods. Time to become a threat.

The screams of starving crowd increase in volume.

They cannot stand it. They want to see him die, but are drawn tight with the pleasure of watching us. He, with his sharp, forceful, but random jabs. Me, in all my undeniable perfection. My unmatched skill. They cannot get enough of it. They are enthralled by me.

As they should be.

I am the best at what I do. I always have been.

There is a reason Clu keeps me around . . . . .

The fight goes on.

The opponent makes a well aimed strike at my neck. I drop my head back, watch as his arm flies over my face, consuming my vision. I throw my own limbs wide for balance.

It would look spectacular, if I were to simply draw my hands back up as I straightened myself once more, if I were to cut into the warm data layers and pixels of his body from either side in a single, casual gesture. How fluid. How graceful. How quick.

That's not what they want.

The rumbling crowd below believes as Clu has told them. They see in this opponent a stray. A threat to their perfection. A guilty creature who has threatened what they think they hold most dear. They hate him. They don't even need much of a reason. They know what they think he is, and that's enough. They simply _hate_ him.

And because they hate him, this fight is personal . . . Personal for each and every one of them. I can hear it in their raw, animal voices. They want him to die without grace, without elegance, without-

_. . . No. _

_It doesn't matter._

Clu wants me to make them happy.

_Personal it is._

I straighten myself, and fling only arm up, smashing the back of my wrist into the side of his helmet. The program hurtles to the ground.

He lies there, splayed in a kind of twist, his torso flat against the floor, his hips twisted so that he rests on his side from that point down. He presses the side of his face and both his palms into the floor. His disc has been dropped.

But he rolls himself. The program flips onto his back and looks up at me.

I stand over him for just a moment, letting my audience drink, letting them suckle on the anticipation. I wait for them, my left hand across my torso, my right elbow bent behind my head, that disc ready and pointed down at his chest.

He looks at me.

He says it one more time.

"Please."

The starving audience howls in reply. They can't wait any longer.

I slam my right hand down.

The disc cuts through him, driving so deep that my knuckles burry themselves into his chest as he shatters. His last, glitching, guttural shriek seems to come from the remains themselves as they scatter at my feet.

The fanatics, the crowd . . . They go wild. The innocent is dead.

They have had their sustenance.


	28. Futility

Clu is radiant. His eyes are electric, burning blue as he swaggers into the space.

He's just returned from Arjia. My scans can sense it.

_I_ sense it.

Jarvis looks up, stopping in his work to observe our mutual superior's apparent glee. His control panel, meanwhile, turns to static as it is abandoned at a crucial moment.

This cannot, however, lower Clu's mood. He waves his hand dismissively at Jarvis, who retracts himself back behind his panel, and sits down. Things must have gone well.

_. . . Whatever _that_ means._

Still jovial, unaware of the stares around him, he calls to me.

"Rinzler."

Voice like electricity.

"Let's check up on your disc."

Jarvis cranes his head over the top of the panel again, peeking out at the room at large. I hardly notice. I am all tunnel vision, consumed by the command before me.

I approach my master. I halt before him, disc in hand, presentation protocol jumping across my eyes.

_Head lowered-_

_. . . flat palms-_

I'm well accustomed to this constant instruction, this reminder that I am an accident of a being which is dependent on his superior's custom design. An individual in fragment, coiled inside a shell of code. Of silence . . .

_Error._

Clu is right as usual.

I need maintenance.

My master is perched in his usual chair, raised in the center of the room. Daunting. As I present my weapon to him, I lower my head in reverence. In respect, veneration. In servitude.

I always afford him these things.

Clu is the only authority I know.

How much he tampers with me, whatever fate he would have preferred for me, whatever my opinion on the steady changes in his system, they make no difference. I will always serve him, and will always behave as such.

I know my place.

_. . ._

_How could I forget?_


	29. Sleep III: Breaking Points

My personal phantoms move in and out, twisting through me. They haunt me in my sleep.

Faces fly past me, leave me behind. So many are in white helmets, circuits everywhere. They bring with them the hollowness of loss.

One such conscript, I remember, was blonde. He wore a sort of vest, running blue with foreign, ancient, but familiar circuitry. I think I knew him for a long time. I see him in my head, spinning an odd sort of code disc on the end of his finger... But then he's gone. Not just from memory. I feel it. He's gone forever. Dead, right in front of me. I can't remember his name.

I see others, too. Less personal. They are a series of nameless faces, some grateful, some admiring, some new, some old. Some are ISOs.

Out of their midst, though, I see_ him_.

I see the one who looks so much like Clu, and yet, so unlike him. I see his eyes. Warm, bright, mischievous eyes. His unruly hair. He smiles so often, and I remember him as he claps his hand on my shoulder. Friendly. But then, he is running, running away from me, from some fatal mistake. . .

I failed him.

_What have I done?_

He leaves me, leaves me with this lingering question. But he, his memory, his questions, they are not the worst thing which sleep can bring.

No, That title belongs to _her_.

The nameless ghost.

The unforgettable woman.

My beautiful program.

I remember her so clearly. It is as if she's somehow been ingrained into my own systems, like she's a fragment of myself. A piece of me _belongs_ to her, and I cannot take it back, not any more than I can take her, for she is gone as well. She is long lost in the sea of my city, in the shelter of hiding. She is _free._

But I remember. I _always _remember. Even now, her voice cuts through my systems, blinds my closed eyes, made so much worse by the vividness of the memory which has risen in my sleep.

In this dream, she is dressed in that strange way again, all in white, uniform cut with a garishly neon blue. Her hair is hidden away beneath some kind of circuit emblazoned cap.

_She is lovely_.

I think it even in sleep.

_Hopeless Rinzler . . ._

The dream carries on, and she looks at me, perching herself, so neatly, on the edge of her chair. Her eyes, clear, cool, pale blue, fixate on me, and the batting fans of her long lashes begin to flutter at their borders.

I am helpless.

I have to come to her.

_Don't say it._

I warn myself away as I approach, transfixed. I've had this dream before. I know what's going to happen.

_Don't . . ._

But I do. My own voice is staggering enough, one of so many things which have been taken from me. I don't like to hear it, much less what it says.

_"I can always count on you, can't I?"_

Something is freezes inside of my chest when I say it, something about the words cutting into me.

. . . But there is more.

_Don't. Beautiful program. Don't._

I think it at her with all I have. But she's going to do it anyway.

And I am still going to let her.

As the dream commences, I sit, relax beside her. I melt. Trying not to show it, I collapse in her presence. I am consumed by relief, freedom, sanctuary . . . And something else. Something so much more terrible, so much more wrenching to watch.

Her hand is shifting, now, playing towards me, playing towards this weakness I refuse to name, playing towards what I cannot fight.

_. . . . . . Please. Don't. _

I am so unaccustomed to begging.

_Don't say it._

But I loathe the inventible response.

The tragedy of it is precluded by her eyes. Those huge, fixating, lovely eyes. It is completed by the smile playing across her mouth, her delicate face, her tucked together posture, finalized by the way her hand flexes as if to reach for mine. I am shattered. Broken by immaculate details, by this fleeting moment.

_"Always."_

That is what she says.

Always.

It's one word. That is all, and it's enough. It runs itself through me.

I gasp, stutter, wretch to wakefulness. My own grimace tears at my face, and my helmet snaps down, ripping me away from everything. Away from always, and her.

I want to scream.

_Beautiful program . . ._

She is tearing me apart.


	30. Skyward

Clu, robed and hooded, turns the baton over and over in his hand. He does not acknowledging the utility program who presented it. The orange clad worker, meanwhile, shifts his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.

"It's fully operational?" Clu says, pinching it between two fingers, studying the balance of it.

The program nods rapidly, blond curls bouncing on the top of his head.

"Yes sir, it's ready for test flight... sir."

Clu turns his head slowly to look at the program, who stares nervously at his feet to avoid the flat and icy gaze of an annoyed master.

He then looks back to the baton. Encased inside it is the prototype for a new generation of light jet, one which is faster, more maneuverable, capable of greater altitude and near instantaneous acceleration.

Or so says the worker who built it.

Clu looks from him to me, and holds out the baton on his flattened palm.

_Yes __**sir**__._

I duck my head once, and reach out to take it. The baton is cool in my hand, pure and unhandled.

I look up into Clu's face. He gestures absently, and speaks to a guard in the corner without looking back.

"Get the transport."

**. . . . .**

The wide, glassy, flat expanse of the lightcycle grid hangs below us, and I stand at the back of Clu's vessel watching its passage. The door is open. The baton is in my hand.

Clu gives the word.

I rush forward, running till there is nothing beneath my feet but empty air and unforgiving ground. I clasp either end of the baton.

_Come on._

A moment passes.

_Come on . . ._

A shock hits my palms as the jet makes its way into existence, its solidity filling the space between my knees, pressing back against my feet, drawing my hands apart. It is a burning encasement of orange light, the feel of it sending surges through my circuits.

The jet itself has a leaner structure than earlier models. It pulls me down, my chest nearly making contact with it, my arms stretched far to wither side, splaying me in the air like some exotic, winged gridbug clinging to the wall. Its entire build seems to be designed for swiftness, for easy targeting. It is neat, compact, elegant, and dangerous.

I'm impressed.

I roll it, twisting over and over till my vision is an unending spiral, and press my weight into the throttle. This new jet doesn't require such force, though, and it shoots forward with such force that I feel for a moment like I've left some of my source code behind in midair, the rest of my yanked away. I ease up.

Turning, wrapping myself back around so that I am facing the transport, I try again, moving only from the wrist. The acceleration is perfect, the energy of it coursing in time with mine, the engine purring in my ears, mixing with the sound of my own quiet satisfaction. Rolling again, I direct myself upwards. I cut through the air, swooping over the transport. For a moment I hang there above them, and then I peel away, flipping myself backwards and hurtling towards the ground.

I watch it as it draws nearer, struck by the darkness of it. By its gleaming, even, geometric pattern.

It races still closer.

I lean into the fall, plummeting towards impact with a vengeance.

And then I hit the throttle again, pulling up and shooting away, gliding above the ground and pressing the speed till am blinded by the rate at which things are passing me.

This is complete release. Pure exhilaration.

_Almost like freedom._

_Error-_

_. . . Of course it is._

Most of the truth seems to fall into that category. I choose to ignore it.

Banking hard, I bring the jet around again, and begin to climb. I send it straight up, screaming into the sky with its belly to my audience. I am completely vertical.

Over my shoulder, I can see the dark and disappearing ground, the shrinking orange blur of Clu's transport, and the light ribbon trailing behind me like a beacon, the legacy of my passing. Before me is the dark heaviness of the heavens, electrical storms eviscerating its usual blanket of cloud.

I fly.

Everything is turning to a blur, peripheral and meaningless. There is nothing but me, the light, and the frozen air biting across the backs of my shoulders as I ascend, cutting into the tender flesh of the sky. I am chasing eternity, and it's growing close around me, the cost of freedom whispering in my circuits.

Freedom. I can almost taste it. I close my eyes.

For a fleeting instant, I loose myself to the sky.

* * *

Author's note: Yay for chapter 30! Thanks again to all of you for reading, and for all your great reviews and support thus far. You guys are awesome!

. . . That's all I wanted to say. ^^

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	31. Error

He shouldn't have said it. Now I can't get rid of it, regardless of what I do.

The name is like a virus. An acrid taste accompanies its mention.

_What is he doing?_

Clu doesn't know, and I can't remember how I _do_, but it doesn't matter. What _matters_ is that this will not end well for my system if he pursues it.

_Where have I heard that name?_

My searching rejects me.

Warning, error, unauthorized . . . The usual.

_NO._

I refuse.

_Come on..._

_Warning: unauthorized-_

Damn it.

_I said NO._

For a moment, the protest almost sounds like me, an actual, living voice seeming to reach out from the flat words running across my view. It is both forceful, and startling.

_WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WAR-_

It is also clearly off limits. Pain shoots through my body, warning me off from my own memories once again, locking me out from something I desperately need to know.

_Who is it?_

I drag answers from myself, analyzing the scene again, again, and again.

_Processing-_

Clu came in smiling. He left and returned without a word or a companion.

_Analyzing-_

That can only ever mean one thing.

_Arjia._

His private little war again. The one no one understands. The initiative mentioned in passing and mutterings and vague, excessive demands. The initiative that now involves _this._

_Dillinger._

That's the name he muttered to himself. It wasn't meant to be heard. Only a quiet, self satisfied murmuring over something so erroneous it can't even be named.

I know this.

I know it like I know how to breathe. I can't _help_ but know it.

_Clu is making a mistake._

This.

Is.

**Wrong.**

* * *

Author's note: Guysguysguysguysguys! You have _got_ to see this! I haven't been this maniacally excited since, well, I figured out what the climax of this story was going to involve. Oh, and it also provides a neat compliment to this chapter, heh heh heh. XD

So, yeah. Go to youtube, and look up **TR3N (TRON 3) Teaser 2 - The Dillingers' Chat (TRON: Legacy Bu-Ray Easter Egg) [HD 720p]. **Eeeep!

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Ps. Oh, and pay attention to their usernames. :D


	32. Rectifier

Rectifier is a great maze; a word unto itself hidden away in a fortress of rock.

It is dark.

The only glow is hard and orange, and seeping fog is its only companion. It reflects our unwholesome light back into our eyes at it passes.

It is cold.

Clu tours his masterpiece casually, commenting on the vastness of its halls, the adequacy or inadequacy of its construction as he sees fit. He talks of what it has, what it needs, what will be loaded onto it now that the beam redirect for the solar sailor is complete. He is pleased.

I am indifferent.

I ignore its size, deny its implications. I pretend that the location holds no resonance for me, no reminders, no quaint sense of foreshadowing. I choose denial, and I do an impressive job of , I am still graced with the silence of automation:

Clu goes left, go left. Follow orders. Memorize layout. Don't. Think.

. . . _processing-_

This is one of those moments. A quiet reprieve. All I have to do is learn my surroundings. Follow routine. Bar the wonderings of what Clu's dealings with the world of users could have to do with the enormity of this place, the scale of his prospective onslaught.

_Against what?_

A shiver runs through my circuits, an almost anticipation.

_WHY?_

I push away the questions. They are ruining my shift. However redundant the watching of passing, identical walls in huge, identical rooms may be, there are moments when I am content with such blatant un-excitement. In so many hundreds of cycles of living, I have had my share of them. Of routines. Of checkups. Of days not worth remembering, but which I will not forget.

. . . I refuse to. Not when everything else is taken away. I remember what I can; like I will always remember this room.

I will remember its hundred thousand circles on the floor, just large enough to stand on, positioned so neatly beneath another hundred thousand apertures for yet another hundred thousand needles; the contraptions hanging down from the ceiling like so many clenched metal fingers.

I will remember the way it looks when Clu steps onto one of the dark little circles, sending the white bars of light restraints up his legs, across his hips, under his arms.

I will remember the way he smiles when he thinks of how very many useless strays, rebels, delinquents, free thinkers, and spirituals he will see encased just like this, waiting for the descent of the aperture above, for the needle in their necks. I will remember how he steps away again, even the machinery obeying his word.

I will remember the understanding. The perfect visual.

A hundred thousand programs, a hundred thousand needles sunk into their soft flesh, another hundred thousand soldiers ready behind them, waiting till they are cold and dark to sync their discs with Clu's favorite invention. His perfect download.

It will wipe them clean, and then, it will fill them up. Complete, perfect, mechanized, efficient recompile. The instant creation of flawless, identical soldiers; of nameless hordes with no identities beyond their own fallible ranks.

I can see it. Staring at this empty room, I can see it. A hundred thousand murdered minds, a hundred thousand empty slaves. Meanwhile, our cities inhabitants fall to the streets, themselves slaves without even the grace of being empty. Slaves to fear. Fear of this fate, of Clu's wrath, of something else they cannot name, of the games, and of me.

_Clu, What have you done?_

This is not what perfection was meant to be.

* * *

Author's note: Sorry for the slow update, everyone. I've got a lot of ideas right now, but not a lot of inner writer's harmony with which to present them. I'll get back to you guys as soon as I can with a whole batch of updates, though, and hopefully that'll make it up to you. ^^Thanks!

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	33. Rinzler, Microcosm

The more I see of what my world has become, the more I remember, and the less I sleep. Now, I always wake.

Each time, it begins with the glimpse of cold that is my bed against my cheek, air scalding my throat with sound choked up inside of it like an expanding fist whose fingers are clutching at my insides. I awake to find my eyes can no longer process unfiltered light, to the reality that fresh air and the stink of plastic are two entirely different things, to the knowing that in another second's time my helmet will fill in across my eyes, and pull me away.

I can't take it off. It's not that I'm not supposed to. I _can't._ Clu has taken that ability like so much else.

I no longer remember the structure of my own face. My reflection is this hard, heavy, dark, dank little shell, and nothing more. There is no face. No smile. No grimace. No eyes. Only this.

But even if I took my disc from my back, if I sawed through that screen, I wouldn't see my face in the window as a result. I would see a stranger with hair flattened and dulled by the eons, with skin that's forgotten the sensation of light, with eyes like dark pits.

I always imagine them that way.

Empty.

Hollow, cold, and destroyed. They are blind man's eyes.

The world outside is as dark as they are. It moves, pulses, a line of steady glowing traffic in the air below us, sweeping down the blackened streets. There are no programs there to walk them. Those who know leisure travel by any means but by foot. Those that do not, those who stay hidden behind the assumed safety of constant work, do not travel at all. Those who do appear are only shadows, people in dark outfits, a flicker under a streetlight and no more.

Resistors.

Strays.

The underground on legs, they are gone as quickly as they arrive, and there is nothing Clu thinks they are capable of which would warrant extensive searching in their wake. Unrest grows quietly and quickly under those who refuse to see.

But come it does. I can see it in the eyes of each civilian, of each combatant, of each tired, unwitting servant. I see change. Change . . .

. . . And chaos.

I can feel it. I can hear its call. I feel it digging through me, dragging fragments of memory to the surface, inviting me to show Clu exactly how much is going on beneath this helmet, this shell he created for me. I can feel the resistance rising and falling in me, burning up the questions I so constantly deny.

The questions of right and wrong . . . of the purpose I serve.

_I fight . . ._

For Clu.

That's all the directive I remember.

_I serve . . ._

Clu.

. . .

There must be a reason I lived.

_I fight for—_

NO. I work for Clu. Everything else is coincidence. I lived because it _rained, _ I act because it is what I am told.

_-I serve . . ._

Clu. Always Clu.

_Why?_

_Err—_

_WHY?_

There must be something else . . .

_I . . . Fight . . . ._

_I fight, fight because, I—_

. . . I? I _what? _WHAT? I . . .

_I—I fight—_

_fight for-_

_for-I-serve-I_

—_orders-to_

_-orders-users . . . (error)-_

_directive- I_

_-serve—_

_-fight-I-_

_I, I—_

_I . . . ._

_**I PROTECT THE SYSTEM.**_

Words like electric shocks, error messages that blind, pain which bends me backwards, truth which was hidden but never forbidden all strike me at once with such force that my breath catches in my throat.

It's a loophole.

It's an insignificant fragment of some larger whole, a whisper of what was stolen from me some 900 cycles before, not even a fully-fledged command . . . But it is there. It is an old and simple duty, too innocuous to have been erased, a taken-for-granted basic function too deeply ingrained to be ignored. It is the first spark in the darkness, a comparatively free element amidst the binding, explicit lines of code and protocol, a sample of opinion.

This is how chaos begins.


	34. Mutiny

The room where he keeps them is massive, but seems small. So many bodies were not meant to fit in one space. Storage.

This is where they wait. This is where the empty eyed and defeated delay before being taken from themselves, before having their memories wiped and their code written over until they're no more than a wad or protocol wrapped in flesh and tied up with rank. Drones.

Clu leads us out onto the balcony, out onto the ledge from which the whole of this so called "staging area" is visible. The guards part for him. Jarvis and I follow.

A sea of black is ahead of us. I step forward to look.

Off the edge of the balcony below us there extends a horizon of silent programs, heads against their chests, stopped where they stand. Their circuits glow so halfheartedly that the colors have become nothing more than a single, uniform, and flickering gray blur.

Their sleeping faces do not know peace.

Those who are awake know no better.

They look around. Their eyes are wounded and hollow, and they are frightened, angered, resigned. They look upon Clu as if he has come to save them. These, his people.

His tools.

I cock my head, and turn it from one side to the other. I scan.

_Evaluating—_

_Evaluating—_

The results are not positive. Not in the least. My understanding of this is not much better.

_Why?_

I ask what I know.

_Because Clu wants it._

The crowd is packed too closely to sit. Those who have powered down lean, standing, against the shoulders and backs of the nearest programs, held up by the pressure of bodies on all sides, getting ahead. Clu will have the rest of them shut down when they board the sailor . . .

The sailor.

After 21 milicycles of this, they don't have much longer to wait. The whole shipment will be sent to Rectifier, and the first ranks of Clu's army will be born.

_Made._

Not born. This is not a natural process. It was never meant to exist . . .

. . . _Then why?_

Clu answers my thought with his own satisfied musings.

"Here we go," he says to himself, crossing his arms over his chest. Jarvis looks at him quizzically. I turn as well, a slow and grinding motion of expectation of which he takes surprisingly little note.

"This is step two," he says, sending his venomous smile in Jarvis's direction. I understand. It's the initiative.

_. . . Dillinger . . ._

All this misery is for his private, as of yet unrealized war?

_Of course it is it's it's-_

". . . It's all part of the plan." He speaks, finishes my thought with such pride.

_. . ._

_Traitor._

The word smashes my systems, hurls error messages out of its way, rolls itself through my head.

I remember.

Systems administrator. That was his job. That was his intention. To build the perfect system.

_This is not perfection . . ._

He used to take orders.

_ERROR— user— Dillinger— MEMORY FILE- Clu- Flynn- ERROR—protect—system—ERROR ERROR ERROR – _

_Redirecting . . ._

I can taste the smell from the programs below. They're going rancid, the whole sheet of them.

The floor is that sheet. A sheet of programs compiled so closely together they look like pixels, shards of data in a greater whole, the breathing body of some enormous, shapeless being. It undulates. It reeks. The creature's breath smells like smoking circuits, of burnt energy and the power sludge which cakes itself against the roofs of its many mouths. The whole floor becomes it, the stinking creature languishing beneath the burning blue eyes of its master.

_Evaluation: WRONG_

Obviously.

_You used to be right . . ._

_ERROR—_

_. . . ._

I can stop looking so easily. I can turn away, look inside myself and away from the programs decaying below me. I can look at Clu, and see light. See power . . . See why I am so immune to their plight.

Once, I think, I would not have stood for this. Of course, I cannot know. Clu took my truth from me, just as he will do to them. His supposedly erring captives.

_This is not justified._

_ER-_

No.

. . ._protectthesystem_ . . . . . .

They are the strays. They are the rejects. They are the fanatics! Errors. . .

. . . No.

What they are is the perfect candidates, the carefully selected potentials. They are Clu's building blocks, his tools to use. That is what we are . . .

_But Clu, [IserveClu] Clu is _right. _Clu is _always_ Right . . ._

_Not this—ERROR ERROR ERROR- time . . ._

_WARNING—_

NO.

. . .

Yes.

I watch Clu. I watch the programs. The wrong, wrong programs in their holding area under a wise master's discretion. A master who is self-made. A master who made _me,_ the most perfect soldier of all.

_STOPHIM. . . ._

I see them suffer, a mindless herd. They are only the beginning.

_Traitor . . ._

I sense it. Clu intends it. He continues to smile, his plans, his Dillinger and Arjia plans coming together before him amidst the sea of pixels, in the reeking body below . . .

_Mistake—_

NO. Clu is perfection. He cannot be wrong. He is master, he is leader, he_ made me . . . _

_Made me what I am._

I am looking at Clu's back, at yellow lines and a dark silhouette against the backdrop of his captives' dying circuits. I am thinking about me. I am thinking about the things that I cannot remember, the words I've forgotten how to speak, the ease which I look away when I know, _know_ that I am somehow infuriated with everything I have just seen.

_Traitortraitortraitor . . ._

I am thinking about the way error messages and warnings and spikes of pain blur into the background in one continuous manifestation of unpleasantness, one to which I am accustomed but from which I can't escape. I am thinking about the knowing I have sifted up from my cordoned off memories, the sense his role in my existence.

"_I always wondered why he wouldn't just die . . ." _

I cannot tell if I am thinking it, or if, somehow, I am remembering, but it doesn't matter. I know only a word, a word which won't leave my mind, a word I cannot shake. _Traitor._


	35. Gilded Cage

I know the rhetoric.

I know the stories.

I know what I am supposed to think, and I understand with inexorable clarity that I have no choice regarding how I act. I do what protocol allows. I know that I was built to serve. I know that I-

That I . . .

. . . I

Never

Had

A

**Choice.**

_Of all that Clu has taken from me . . ._

I am trapped. I cannot get free.

The closest thing I know to liberty is the occasional loophole in my command line. The only choice which I ever make is the manner in which I execute any given order . . . which hardly counts.

To me, freedom lies in the space between immediate death and a good fight as I play along in the most literal of Clu's many, many games. Games of the body. Games of the mind. Games of power.

I play those games.

I play each and every one of them in their every respect. That is the sick summery of my existence.

My one redeeming trait, however, is my ability to think. I am a fully realized mind, regardless of the appearances I give. I am not a machine. I have a sense of value, of right and wrong and sensation. I am not blind. I am not stupid. I am _not_ blank. I _can_ feel. I am as capable of hate as every program in this system.

In that respect, Clu has taught me well.

Clu.

However much I may admire him, as subservient as I must be, as many times as I am strangled by pain for thinking anything beyond perfect servant's mantras and as unwaveringly his as I am . . . that hate defies everything.

_I've figured it out._

I.

Hate.

CLU.

Thief, leader, traitor, master, I hate him unto death. The only thing which causes me more torture than him is the knowing how impossibly many things he has taken away, my true protocol among them.

_I fight—_

_. . ._

Nothing. I'm blocked. There is nothing -not my own _directives-_ which I can take back. Nothing that I can find, nothing I can reach without becoming completely and utterly broken . . . something which will never occur.

After all, I am Rinzler.

I was built to be perfect.

How ironic.

But the fact remains: I will not, and I _can_not, be broken any further. There is no hope for that.

. . . Not yet.


	36. Uprising

A hundred thousand times I have woken with a jolt, but never quite like this.

I can hear myself.

I can hear, above the despicable sound of my own glitching and aggression, that a visceral snarl is grinding out from between my clenched teeth. It comes from deep in my chest, raw like the too-long silent pixels of my throat, loud and sinister and enraged.

This is what screaming sounds like when nothing in the world can so much as justify speech.

It is not pain, though, as certain as I am as that factor is still in play. Instead, it is frustration- frustration on the point of fury at what I cannot take with me from sleep; at what I dreamt, but can't recall:

Her. My beautiful program.

The one who loved me.

I wake, and I can't take her with me.

. . . And she is not all.

I dreamt of the user's face.

I dreamt of the Clu-blue eyes which burn into my skull, screaming that there is so, so much to remember . . . if remembering where something I did. His face brings with it the unrelenting burning of my most deep seated question: my purpose.

_Query-Primary directive: ERROR_

_Redirecting Query: I serve . . ._

Damn it, **NO!**

_Fight._ I _Fight. _I just can't remember what for.

_What do I _**do?**

. . .

Here it comes again. That fragment of the whole. That piece of directive.

_Redirecting Query: I protect the system._

Yes. As Clu sees fit.

Clu, who watches a room full of broken, captive programs, and smiles. Clu, who I remember, disc in hand, standing over me before everything turned to static. Clu, who denounces the users and then spends his time conspiring with that _name_ . . . with _Dillinger._

_**TRAITOR.**_

The word is a kind of ignition, an internal surge. My helmet is barely on again, sleep not yet entirely gone, but I fly to my feet. I can feel the hard floor so suddenly beneath me, the air which parts for me as I jolt from my back to the feet. There is tension in my fingers which is turning them to claws.

I can feel my disc as it separates from my back. I can feel my frozen fingers locking in around it, the kick of their activation into the close space of my palms as I rip them, tear them, wrench them apart.

Pure and raging fury is all I can see.

I stand in the middle of a dark room with a single, large window, staring at the door through which no one has yet come to claim me. My chest is heaving, my arms are rigid as metal, and my discs are screaming in my hands as they hang, waiting, a few inches away from my thighs. I am poised as if to fight, as if to strike, but with no external enemy to engage. I am alone in the cave of my quarters.

Still, I cannot move. Cannot make myself stop. I am acutely aware of some massive potential energy trapped in the bend of my knees, the curve of my back. It is twisted into the tight retraction of my shoulders, and it hangs on my lowered head.

_Animal._

This is how they like me. Something to be let off the chain.

This is what Clu created.

Pure, perfect, destructive potential with no memories for which to feel, no truth to hold to but the impression of some user's blue eyes and a leftover fragment of my overall purpose. That is what I am.

_. . . . . Protect the system . . . ._

NO.

_I can't . . . I serve Clu._

If I were one for screaming, that thought would do it, but I'm not.

Instead, my sound roars up in my ears, and in my fury, the room spins away. The discs separate from my hands.

One, then the other, I exert my full force on them, and watch their helpless flight.

The first one imbeds itself almost beyond extraction into the wall, splitting concrete pixels like liquid. It burns for a moment before going dark, a smoking shower of sparks.

The other makes its way to the window, and neatly disproves Clu's claim that it is unbreakable. The same material as the arena walls for disc wars, it is intended to rebound any form of force, but it doesn't. My disc shatters it.

Liquid glass explodes into a sharp shower of pixels, spilling onto the street below as my weapon flies out into the open air. It soars away for some fifty feet before arcing back to me, and I do not take it when it does. I let it pass me by, and it impales the door behind me instead; joining its companion in smoldering defeat.

I don't retrieve the discs. I make a conscious effort against the orders to do so, resisting at my own expense. The pain is absolutely debilitating.

But I will not surrender.

I Resist. I stand in the middle of the open floor, looking out the window.

My system is out there. My city.

_**My **__city . . ._

_Warning: potential corruptible data . . ._

_ERROR-Warning ignored- -_

I am looking at the city that Clu is bound to break.

_The initiative._

That is all he sees anymore. Not this system. Not what fear and totalitarianism will force it to become. He is too busy seeking something still greater. Greater than perfection . . .

He is seeking vindication

_. . . _

_Seeking users._

_ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERRO—_

_No. Focus . . . . . . ._

The smell of sparks, of burnt data on the floor and in my walls, fills my nose . . . whatever sort of nose it is that I have beneath this shell.

_Query: Rinzler—Directive—_

_Processing—_

I don't know why I do this, it never works . . .

_Directive: I fight-_

_ERROR._

_Redirecting Query-_

_Directive(2) identified:_

_- Protect the system._

From what?

_. . ._

_Processing—_

_Processing—_

_Processec—_

ERRORERROERRORERROERROERERROR—

It knocks me to my knees.

_From __**Clu.**_

_-Serve Clu-!_

_Protect the system . . ._

_Go._

Stop this.

_Err—_

No. Not an error. It's protocol.

. . . A loophole.

_Protect the system._

I am looking out the broken window. I am thinking of treachery and its source. I am sifting protocol, my own cycling a roar in my ears, my chest heaving. I am down on my knees, my discs and their filters and guidelines and pain forgotten and imbedded in the walls.

_Query: emergency protocol for (protection—full system)_

_Processing-_

_Processing—_

_Processing . . ._

I search. I can feel my system digging for something I can't remember, for something I didn't know I had.

The something is old.

I can sense a kind of forgetting, a forgetting that goes far beyond what Clu has done to me. The something is buried so deeply that even he could not erase it, so deeply it cannot be seen.

But the something is _there. _I can feel it, feel it struggling up from the dust . . . Struggling to rise.

_Come on._

_. . ._

_. . . _

_. . ._

_Protocol located—_

_Processing . . ._

_Protocol identified—Result: TRN-A1 emergency response_

_Assessing situation compatibility—_

_Processing—_

_Compatibility: 99.98%_

It is perfect.

_Protocol access assessment for (Emergency TRN-A1 Response):_

_Access Granted._

Lines of command fill my vision, like heat rising from a wound.

Protocol is all I have, but it serves me well.

I stand, and retrieve my discs. I rip them from their smoking burrows, from the gashes they've created in my walls. I take them, and I replace them, and I run.

I hurtle myself from the window.

I drop.

Two stories down.

Three.

Five.

Ten.

I fall.

The darkened windows of the building beside me pass like sparks, fleeting and mortal, as I accelerate towards the ground.

But I have time. I take my baton, summon my jet. It rezzes to life beneath me, and I am gone.

Gone towards the outlands.

. . . Towards Arjia.

I know what I have to do.


	37. IO part I: Vagabond

The world here is defined by dark.

Dark cliffs, blue tinted by what steely light there is.

Dark clouds, heavy and drooping and leaking towards the ground.

Dark ground, invisible and blackened below me, a sea of jutting stone cut by swirling eddies of fog.

And then there is Arjia. A shimmer of white. A soft white dawn on the horizons edge. Whatever logical faculties I'm still running on are rendered useless by the view.

_Faster._

A spark in the darkness, I accelerate.

**. . . . .**

There is a hollow thud, accompanied by the crunching of debris, as my feet hit the ground.

This place is as I remember it.

Monoliths of silver and white wreckage tear at the sky. The ground is a treacherous wasteland of charred and pixilated rubble. Fog and mist undulate across it, swirling eddies gathering around the larger leftovers of the once impressive city. It is cold against my shins.

I walk.

Light finds its way up from beneath the mist, delicate fissures beneath my feet glowing somewhere between blue and white as I draw nearer to the city's center.

This was once a beautiful place.

I remember only fragments, still images with no context, but for once I do remember. I can recall soaring white structures, circuits on every surface, a constant ethereal glow accented by a myriad of ISO symbols along the arches and soft curvatures of the architecture. I remember programs on the streets, slow and gentle in their passing of the single fixture in the city's central plaza, the platform.

I remember them vividly.

Some, the ISOs, had circuits in their skin; streaks of light pulsing under their eyes, slashed across their cheekbones. They looked strange. They looked odd and foreign in the same way that their city did.

Different.

_Wrong . . . . . ._

The word is an echo without meaning. Clu's thoughts, not mine.

What do I think?

Nothing.

Most of the ISOs were already dead by the time I existed, thanks to Clu. I know nothing.

I can have no hate . . . not for ISOs.

I can't so much as hazard an opinion.

Not here.

Clu, on the other hand . . .

No. Not now. Now there is only defiance. Only a mission. Only a goal. A single opportunity to stop Clu before he destroys the rest of my system as he did this place.

I have my mission.

I enter the plaza.

The neat hexagons of blue-gray data which once lay underfoot have been overturned and disordered in places, leaving black holes in the grime coated silver street. By now, the mists have evaporated. It's as if they're being held off by the light.

Before me on the ground, though, in the center of destruction, is a raised stone. It is an intricately carved, round edged piece.

It calls me.

Precise grooves on its surface glow in the same cyan as unrefined power as I approach, forming a twisting fractal pattern across it, a thing of mystery in the middle of a deadened wreckage heap with the pure-energy, simmering aurora's of this place rising from the ground beneath it. They are white, incandescent, and transparent all at once. They weave away amidst the wreckage, disappearing into the darkened sky above.

Slowly, I take my disc from my back.

I am ready.

* * *

Author's note: I know, I keep leaving guys hanging. It's awful of me. But I promised myself that I would have an update for tonight, and so here's part I, despite its counterpart still being in the editing process, and here's hoping it holds you all over.

Thanks to all of you, as always, for reading!

End of line.


	38. IO part II: Messenger

The platform is caught somewhere between a heat so intense it is freezing, and cold so deep that it burns. I can feel it in my feet.

As I take my place upon the platform, its reaction is immediate . . . and inescapable.

The incandescent auroras which rise from the ground undulate through the air around me, swimming through the fog and spiraling upwards around me into a column with no visible end. I am contained by a latticework of energy, a solid white glow.

Below me, the platform illuminates.

Blinding cyan blue and white blur together, glowing so brightly I can't see past the rising light to my own feet, and the platform begins to burn beneath me. Its twisting patterns seem intent on scalding themselves into my feet, heedless of my boots.

In my hand, my disc comes to life. I can feel its energy, so much like my own, but laid across some other foundation and riddled by the scars of Clu and his coding. It thrums against my palms as I raise my arms.

My systems are screaming.

_Release it._

I linger there for a moment, a black shade encased by weaving strands of light and seeping energy, with arms extended as far above my head as I can manage. I am standing straighter than I can remember having ever stood, and looking up at the weapon, the key, in my hands. It tugs against my fingers as if it's being summoned . . . its energy bonded with something elsewhere, other, that I don't understand.

I let it go, and fall to the ground.

Sinking on one bent knee, face turned upwards to meet the endless tunnel of light above me, I am flooded with release. The entire contents of my being, of my servitude and dedications, are hovering above me, an inexplicable physical link between myself and the unknowable . . . an expedient of grace.

_. . . Grace . . ._

For a moment, that is all there is. And then there is a faltering, a fissure in the connection. The incongruence makes itself known with a ringing in my ears, a sinking in my chest. My disc falters in the air above me.

_No . . ._

And then it breaks in two. One disc remains in place, whirring quietly, as the other climbs. As it ascends, it flickers, the orange around its blade steadily fading and flickering until somehow, suddenly, it has changed colors completely . . . to _white._

It is pure, blinding. In looking at it I can feel something rising up inside of me that I haven't felt, under any identity, since I came to this system.

_This system . . ._

The white disc climbs away, making its way another few delicate feet closer to the heavens. The stands of light and shimmering auroras around me begin to pulse in iridescent time with the spinning of its blade.

I am drowning in light.

I am overwhelmed by the whispering of the moving air.

I am being torn out of myself, clarity burning itself into my systems, simultaneous torture and reprieve.

I can see myself laid out in the pattern of the lights, the story of my existence painted into the sky above where help supposedly lies in wait for my discs and my actions.

Images begin to flicker before my eyes. Hollow snippets, too fleeting to retain, come to me as fragments of a broken whole.

The light around me grows.

The disc spins faster.

The sensation of remembering, of knowing, climbs up through my systems like some ever building pressure, pushing its way into my chest, filling up the hollow spaces there. For the first time in so many hundreds of cycles, I am silent. The sound is gone.

_This is right._

We'll be saved.

I am filled with the writhing certainty of it, the gnashing anticipation of intervention, of everything dependent on this disc… this communication.

_I should have done this before . . . _

A hot surge runs up and down my circuits, crawling up the back of my neck. I can feel my hair trying to stand on end beneath my helmet as my thought is shattered by the jolt of connection. It knocks the air from my chest.

The disc has stopped rising.

_TRANSMITTING._

The message sounds to me like a voice in my head, reverberating off the walls of my skull. It is low and roughened, but warm. Strong. Assured. Otherworldly.

. . . Familiar.

_**Alan-1.**_

_ERROR ERROR ERR-_

_. . . Shut up._

My circuits ignite.

My own glow is temporarily blinding. I suck sharply at the air, but can't feel the breath. Elation, anticipation, the ecstasy of faith and grace, defiance and release, they rage inside of me. They press their way up my throat, clawing to escape in some kind of speech, but I have no words. I have nothing to say worth being forgotten.

_SEEKING DEVICE- ADDRESS: 8162156658_ (_TYPE: "PAGER")_

Above me, the disc is a solid white glow, a perfect blinding circle. Its lighted blade throbs.

_Processing-_

_DEVICE CONTACT ESTABLISHED._

Again, the input has a voice of its own.

For a long moment I am left with nothing but my own heaving chest and the shimmering column of light around me. And then there is the voice once again, and a shock through my body forces my head back, and my arms fall open to either side of me. The four squared emblem of circuitry on my chest , facing skyward, is scorching me from the inside out.

I gasp. The sound crackles out of me, races towards the sky. I can't catch my breath . . . I don't want to.

Torso thrown back, kneeling on a scalding surface, blinded from all sides, and exposed before a force I can neither see nor name, I surrender. Completely, utterly surrender. The voice comes as my reward.

It says only two words.

_MESSAGE SENT._


	39. Homecoming

They are waiting for me when I return.

Four guards and Clu, murder in his eyes.

This is not about disappearing. This is not about the window. This is not about the fissures in my wall. _This_ is a death sentence.

_ . . . __He knows._

* * *

Author's note: Before I go on, I just want to take a moment to thank everybody who helped me get my feet under me for these last few chapters, and who helped me edit the little monsters when I was finally done typing them.

Jax Solo: I totally owe you one; your feedback on Messenger was priceless! And thanks to you, I am now also a deviantart addict. XD

Drake: By the time you get to this chapter, maybe you'll have a screen name on this site I can type instead, but long story short, you are awesome, and I am happy to go off the grid with you any time. ;) Thanks a million times over for your suggestions and support on both the I/O chapters.

Homesickblues37: Not sure you'll ever look at this, but thank you for listening to me rant. Believe me, it helps.

And thanks to everyone else, as always, who's read and reviewed! ^^

End of line.


	40. Identity II: Rectified

Clu says nothing.

He stares into the shield of my helmet, eyes scalding, fists balled up against his thighs so tightly his wrists are beginning to quake. His eyes are unreadable blue sockets, filled up with sparks, looking out above the lie of his smile.

And then, suddenly, there are words.

"Rinzler."

_. . ._

"Come with me."

His mouth hardly moves as he speaks, but as he finishes, the corner of it pulls up again into that dangerous smile, crinkling the flesh of his cheek. His lips press together with perfect, disturbing control. The voice which slips from them, however, is not angry, but something else. Laced with confidence and dismissal, it is free of emotion, filled only with freezing, chilling cold, and with those dark words, he turns, and strides out the door.

His team of guards draws up around me, and I follow him into the hallway's light.

**. . . . .**

Orange.

Everything is orange.

When did it get that way? I remember a time when the black of the floor looked more like blue, the cool of white light humming in very circuit. I remember busy, contented programs, the constant soft sound of passing feet echoing off the walls. This hallway, this building . . . They used to be welcoming, used to be crowded. I _remember_, and if such remembering hurts, I'm past the point of feeling it.

What I _do_ have is the suspicion of pain. I am filled with by notion that there is some lurking ache in me for that old world that I so hazily recall. It's disturbing, suggestive of still wider spread internal unrest at a moment when I am certain that my purpose has been fulfilled…. A moment that should be blank, quiet, calm. Instead, I am filled with thought and memory, and a strange, lingering presence.

_Alan-1 . . ._

I can hear the displeasure in the clicking and grinding of my sound. I acted to alt the chaos in me, in this system. Instead, I find that my mind refuses to quiet, and the quiet fury at being surrounded by guards is only fueling its constant, nagging occupation.

_Inferior creatures . . ._

They are not a threat. They are not the reason I follow so quietly, so readily. No, that honor is still reserved for Clu. Whatever else may be occurring in my mind, I am still subservient, defined by the framework of his orders, his harsh programming. I have no choice but to follow, and I do. His sour yellow silhouette leads me on.

Down the hall, down a level, I follow him past the windows and the world, past the level of the ground, going lower and lower to a place where there is nothing but orange and darkness, and then darkness alone, and then, finally, to a room where there should never have been anything at all.

**. . . . .**

_**No.**_

The word crashes into the front of my skull as Clu disappears into the dimness ahead of me, a string of angry yellow lines against the dark.

My hand flinches for my baton before conscious thought or protocol can stop it.

_**NO.**_

I know this place. I know this dark room, illuminated by nothing more than the blinking of multi-color controls against the back wall, built around a single, cold, medical slab.

Memories stream across my vision, my life before my eyes.

I remember a beam of I/O light, a reflected, half dead face in the surface of the floor, the eyes of a woman who's name I can't find, a hundred thousand rounds of disk wars, a User's fleeing feet, a million broken pixels, the heat of death, and this room, a smoldering program slumped on that table with a needle through the back of his neck.

Clu's punishment is simple: he will take, once again, what I have gained, my life and mind to be scalded out of me by a power surge as he watches, waiting for my circuits to die, for the opportunity to re-write me.

_Make me perfect . . . ._

_NO! Not again . . ._

Clu's voice cuts through the darkness, finds its way to the place in the doorway where I hesitate, my entourage of guards around me, my sound a snarling that rises from my chest.

"Hold him."

At their master's urging, the four hulking programs surge towards me, and I linger for a moment between protocol, loyalty, and desperation. And then, a single thought crashes through my head.

_I refuse._

I draw my discs.

I have chosen freedom.

The guards descend.

**. . . . .**

I take my first two opponents easily, jabbing one in the gut with my elbow as I shove a disc into the chest of the other. As I twist to repeat the maneuver on the other, he withdraws his baton.

He matches my first disc with a freshly rezzed blade, only to see his arm severed by the weapon in my other hand. He collapses.

I turn to meet the other two.

Smarter than his companions, the first of them stands far away from me, a newly rezzed and shock equipped staff held at the ready. He is surprisingly fast, and even as I twist away to deflect his jab at my chest, he manages to drive the end of it through my shoulder instead.

I am not immune to electricity. Instantly, my limb function is gone, and my hands spasm at my sides as I struggled to cut through his weapon with my own, the current smoking in my circuits as it makes its through me, exiting from the bottom of my feet into the ground below. It's excruciating.

As I seizure uncontrollably on the end of the staff, the words _Don't let go_ run from my mind and down to my hands where my discs, miraculously, remain despite the quaking and weakening of my fingers.

The guard has embedded the end of the staff deeply enough that even my vision is affected by the electricity, static taking the place of sight with each individual spark. For a moment, I am overwhelmed, clinging to consciousness as I shake, my head jerking about on my neck, pain in every pixel of my body.

And then, somehow, I throw myself backwards, though my legs don't want to listen, and fall off the end of the weapon.

But my systems have been thrown drastically off-line, and I stumbled back, my legs threatening to give out. I land in the grip of the fourth guard, scorched pixels leaking from the puncture in my shoulder, electric shorts still prickling in my circuits, discs trembling in hands. The guard pins my arms behind me, holding my body away from his to avoid the weapons I still refuse to drop.

Almost to my own surprise, I seize the opportunity, after a moment of recovery and labored breathing, to kick him.

The maneuver is effective, doubling him and sending him stumbling back by several steps, but it isn't enough to loosen his grip on my arms, and it is strange in that such uncoordinated strikes aren't typical of me. I'd much prefer to come down on his from above, run his neck across my blade as I twist backwards over his striking arm, elegant and unscathed….

_What's wrong with me?_

_Maybe the shock. . ._

In my moment of hesitation, the guard with the staff is able to take up my right arm, and the two pull me taught between them, twisting my arms in their sockets and crushing my hands until, finally, my discs are forced from my hands. They clatter to the floor, sending up sparks as their blades make contact, and then go dark.

Everything seems to stop.

The only sound in the room is a groan from the program whose arm I severed, coming from somewhere on the floor, and the roar of my sound. Clu stares at me from some distance, eyes wide with recognition of something that invisible to me, but which fills his gaze with raw, long dormant hate.

He approaches me with slow, deliberate steps, and my captors rip at my arms, four hands clutching above my elbows, digging into my flesh, sizzling against the slashes of circuitry at the folds of my elbows, as I thrash against his coming.

He sees something in me in this moment which brings not only hate to his eyes, but disappointment, and something stranger… almost like _envy _for what I am . . .

_Why . . .?_

A shock of pain fills me, and this time, it is too much to ignore. A light fills my skull, and I am only blinded eyes and white illumination, lost in the connection I have almost made.

_I fight….._

I am so close to knowing. So close to truth. I will not surrender now.

Bracing myself against the guards grips, I raise my legs. As Clu draws close enough, my feet meet his chest. The force of the strike astounds even me, almost launching me from the grip of my captors, my body becoming parallel to the floor as I straighten my legs and kick him away. He falls to the floor on his back several feet away from me.

Likewise, the guards throw me to the ground. I become a flurry of motion, my strength apparently returned.

I am rolling, twisting, palms flat on the floor, lifting myself away . . .

And then there are hands on my limbs, a palm against the smoking hole in in my left shoulder that was left by the staff, pinning me to the floor on my back. A yellow foot finds my chest, and stomps down hard.

Pixels break somewhere inside me, grinding data knocking the air from my body even as I curl reflexively around the source of the crushing force. My teeth scrape against each other. The taste of broken data, cold and metallic, laces my mouth as Clu steps down harder, grinding his heel into me.

And then he stops. I can see him standing above me, moving back a step from where he looms, just to my right . . .

He kicks, swiftly and precisely with the toe of his boot, into my side, rolling me over on myself. Hands pin my wrists to the ground, the front of my helmet pressed against it so that the floor is all I can see.

I reach anyway, struggling blindly, relying on an astute sensed to catch his ankle between my own, trying to rip him out from under himself, but he steps away.

I hear his voice.

It is perfectly, flawlessly, unaffectedly calm.

"Pick him up."

I am dragged to my feet only to find that, this time, my strength is truly gone. My own breathing is nothing more than a spurting series of rasping, rattling, broken sounds inside the confines of my chest. I can feel pixels clattering off of each other with each inhalation, dry and excruciating, and my shoulder has barely halted its smoking. Broken data continues to well up in the wound.

Clu, meanwhile, is staring me down, a deep satisfaction in his eyes.

_This is familiar….._

_NO. No no no…._

_Kill me. I'd rather you kill me. . . . IWILLKILLYOU…_

My thoughts are an incoherent blur of internal and external-source pain, of melted memories and hustling diagnostics, of old protocol screaming to be heard as the thousands of filters and adjustments and upgrades I have undergone brace themselves against the chaos. Sound, my own constant glitching, emerges in severed bursts with each exhalation, an impossible and inexplicable roar…. Almost like a snarl… like a voice through gritted teeth…..

Clu stares into my synthetic black face, and behind him, a medical program appears. There is a long dark braid slipping down over her shoulder, her eyes an empty, solid white. There is something in her hand . . .

"Take it off."

_Proc-ess-ing…._

_Process-ing-_

_Pro—cessssss-_

_Warning: Systems error-_

"REMOVE."

My helmet retracts from my face, a response to the command I hadn't realized he's written into me, and suddenly, the precious little light in the room, mostly provided by blinking controls, becomes blinding. To my (apparently) dilated eyes, it feels more like I am staring into the portal itself . . . And after so long in relative dark, I can't seem to retract my eyes enough to compensate. The function has disappeared. Red, orange, white, and the overwhelming glare of yellow circuits force me to squint, send a pounding through my.

The fresh air hurts too, burns my internal damaged with each breath. I am suddenly aware of the stick of my hair pressed against my head, one strand falling loose across my eye as if in effort to tell me, just once, what color it might be. But it is too dark, too bright, and I cannot tell.

Clu's glove rubs my skin as hand finds me chin, forcing my face towards his. I can feel cold air rushing between my gritted teeth. The amount of sensation that meets my liberated face is overwhelming.

"You," he says, the false pleasantness finally gone from his expression, "have been corrupted."

He throws my head towards my shoulder, pulling his hand back as if repulsed.

"_You've been corrupted."_

"_NO!"_

_RECOGNITION-_

" . . . But no matter."

_..any-lizing—_

"You're nothing I can't fix."

Another medic is handing him my fallen, darkened discs, a perfect catalog of endless code, the ingredients of a ready-made, disciplined soldier . . .

_NO!_

I turn to face him again.

_I fight—_

Again, the truth is _so close . . ._

And then Clu smiles one, final time, and retracts his fingers into a solid fist as he leans in, his lips nearly brushing my ear. It's over.

_I WILL remember . . ._

_Have to remember ….._

Clu's voice is too warm, sticky in its sweetness, his breath hot against my ear.

"Nice try, _Tron._"

I don't hear the rest of what he says. I can't decipher anything, can't process beyond the impossible words.

. . . . . . . _What?_

My systems are screaming, recognition pulsing through me, understanding sending shivers up the back of my neck. So many memories, so many incongruent errors and urges, so many traits I thought were mine alone suddenly making such perfect, perfect sense . . .

_I was once someone else. . ._

The faces, names, memories, they blur together with something else, a hot surging deep in my chest that is writhing inside of me, tearing at the surface and screaming to get out.

_The initiative._

_My_ primary directive. I can feel it rising, the impossible truth looming up before me . . .

And then Clu's fist finds my left check. I can feel data crackling in my neck, and a tooth crumbles to pixels at the back of my mouth… the pieces falling unheeded down my useless, silent throat as my head snaps to the side with such force that my chin nearly meets my shoulder. My vision goes dark.

_WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNNG—_

_Systems failing: emergency backup commencing._

There is no sound, only dark and haze and the struggle to understand past it all, my body limp and far away. My mind grasps for solidity in the haze, so close, so desperate to understand; and it does.

_Tron . . ._

This is my last thought.

At the exact moment at which I think it, a needle finds my neck. There is a split second of indescribable pain, and then, it is over. It is all over. The truth is gone, never to return. Clu has won.

* * *

End of Part III


	41. I Am III: Newborn

Part IV:

Broken

* * *

It begins with a word.

_Rinzler._

It begins with a pounding in my head, ricocheting around my skull, a pain that moves from point to point inside me.

This is my introduction to my body: a guide to which parts of it can hurt.

Life begins with the metallic, sour smell of shorted circuits and the darkness of closed eyes and the sound of someone's shifting weight. It begins with the inexplicable knowing of whose weight that must be.

_Clu._

I am born on my back, the mounted weapon between my shoulder blades digging its way into me. I begin with motion, my fists clenching at my sides. I begin with knowing, my first fully formed thought a single word.

_Error._

Error, because I am broken. Because I am reaching, clinging, at the moment of my inception, to something I don't have, that I can't remember . . .

Life begins with line after line of ones and zeros, with protocol, orders, uses, directives, restrictions, filters, instructions, the ordered mess of it running across my blind eyes. Source code, source code, source code. Me, me, me. Life begins with instruction . . . with identification.

_Designation: Rinzler_

_Designation type: Enforcement._

_Primary directive: Enforce and uphold orders of Clu program._

_Sub directive: Execute authorized combat functions. _

_Program Origin: Unknown._

I am born a soldier.

I can feel the enclosure of a helmet around my head as I take up awareness. I can feel the readiness of my limbs as my body wakes to the world. I am born strong.

I am different. The common knowledge in my code speaks to it… the useless, leftover fragments of otherness. I am a synthetic creation, a composite. I know that programs cannot be made from nothing. I was one someone else.

I had to be.

But now I am new, fresh and visceral and choking on the intensity of my own potential energy. I am newborn but ready, ready to spring, to kill, to serve, ready for the unasked for perfection with which I've been endowed.

I was made . . .

_-ForRevenge-_

_. . . _To be better.

If there was a flaw imbedded in that thought, I can't place it. Not now as consciousness explodes out of the confusion of coming to life. It's gone too quickly, doesn't matter.

_I matter._

_I_ am newly begun and burning. I have arisen from a forgotten and useless former self into the prickling first sensations of an impossible soldier.

And so life begins.

It begins with the sight of blue eyes, a master's satisfied smile as I lift myself to my feet. It begins with coursing energy in dark orange circuits, with my future staring me in the face as if I care to see it.

It begins with the sensation of déjà vu, of starting over. It begins with past, still hanging in the air, abandoned vengeance coiling itself into my code. It begins with the echo of a forgotten name . . .With the rise of a familiar sound.

I am Rinzler.

This is how I'm born.

* * *

Author's note: My thanks once again to Sharinganavenger for catching my typos, hurrying me up, and helping me to chase away my writer's block. ^^ I totally owe you one.

Thanks also to Silvara for taking the time to flood my inbox with reviews. You've been critical, but also encouraging, and I'll get to the fic I promised you immediately. Just . . . please don't hurt me in the mean time! ;)

End of line.


	42. Flynn Incoming

Go, go, go.

Stay, stay, stay.

Listen.

Wait.

_Processing._

Execute.

_Obey._

This is my life. I am a guardian, and I am a servant, and this is how I conduct myself. I am still, until I am not. Then I am strong, and fast, and deadly. I am control, the monster allowed off of its chain when all is not going as it should. I am as much this as I am the hero of the games.

I am a death dealer.

And I have no thoughts.

I simply am, and what I am makes no difference.

_-errorerror-_

. . . **It makes no difference**. If there are words in my head they have no meaning. They are background noise, just the inevitable result of being a living program born from the pixelated remains of some other program. Those words don't count as thoughts. The only words that matter are Clu's. And Clu says to kill. He says to kill and I enjoy it. He says to eliminate a problem, and I do. By disk or hand or cycle, everyone falls to me. I am the perfect defense program.

_Err—_

_I am._

I need no one. And Clue needs me. I am satisfied. The only thing I do need is orders, and those are so intrinsic, so obvious that I don't need to be told, only released.

I do not speak, but I understand.

I have been alive for only a fraction of a cycle, but I am well established. Whatever role I fill it seems I have filled before. When I join the games, the crowd does not need to be told my name, a fact which doesn't matter but which even I am aware of. I do hear the voices calling. But more importantly, I understand what it is I am there to do, and what I do it is not for them. It is for me, and it is for Clu.

He leaves me sometimes, for long stretches, when he does not need his guardian-pet. When he is gone I stay quiet in my cage in the cell blocks below the arena, staying still except to drink and staying silent but for a sound which it seems I cannot help but make as I process my world… a sound like rage and disinterest which seems to stem from some fault elsewhere. No one lets me out but Clu. No one orders my freedom but him, nothing but a need for me to play, or protect, or rectify the game grid justifies my being released. I am something which must be put away carefully when it is not being used.

I am sitting in my cell now, rumbling and staring out the doorway. Four heavily armed guards have arrived.

_Processing—_

There is noise from above. Thousands of pairs of feet, many voices.

_Current directive (assessing input: guards, crowds-) _

_Current directive (acquired)._

_Directive query result: Games_

The force-field falls. They do not look at me as I step out, but they point their weapons at my back. They follow me to the arena, I enter my combatant's cage, and I wait.

I am the last contestant. I go up with the others, but I am given no opponent at first. In the crowd, Clu is watching.

Below me, it begins. The crowd roars. Combatants are falling. I do not care.

I am consumed by purpose.

_Directive: Games._

_Directive: Games._

_Execute function: Kill-9_

_Directive: Games…_

It is all there is. All there is.

_. . ._

. . . Until there is something else.

_Audio detected: (analyzing)_

_Audio detected: audio file: "Combatant Three, violation."_

_Processing—_

_Processing—_

_Evaluating necessity of Rinzler Program._

_Analyzing- _

A rogue player. And the only one left.

_Directive: **Games**_

_Sub-directive: Engage "Combatant Three" program-_

_- Kill-9._

I can tell that this one is different. But it does not matter. This will be easy. It will be satisfying.

He looks at me with brash but frightened blue eyes, barely knowing how to hold his disc, defiant and lucky, odd and yet so identical to every other opponent which has ever come before...

_ERRORERRORERROR: ALERT: PROCESSING-_

_Processing: disabled..._

No. He is just the same. Lucky till now.

_Evaluating—_

And not for long.

* * *

Author's note: SO, college! It's very distracting. So is Redfeather, which is a monstrosity of an original fiction with a lead character which stole some of Rinz's voice, resulting in my hiatus. If you guys are still out there, you have my eternal gratitude. I hope you enjoyed this, even though it was kind of a brief teaser! Thank you all so much for reading! :)

-End of Line


	43. User

Throwing requires momentum, and momentum requires movement.

One, two. The disks, hot and alive in my hands, go free. For a moment all the world turns over itself while I spin. Disk one, move, release. Disk two, move, release. The other program attempts to block one of them, and under its momentum he falls flat, holding his disc haplessly. He sits up, kicking and thrashing, and only narrowly misses the second weapon ricocheting towards him.

The discs return.

I am not one to catch. My discs come to me on their own. There is no ducking or diving on my part, but a twist, a leap, a turn, as slick and elegant as the curve of circuitry. I move, and it practically lands itself in my hand. Then the other appears, and it takes but a flick of the wrist to snatch it from the air.

I hardly even have to look.

My opponent scrambles to his feet before me, and hurtles his disc for all he is worth. It isn't a bad throw, so true and narrow that I duck and spin not once, but twice before I take that momentum and fly… fly over his weapon as it cuts through the air. It's an easy landing. An easy duck, reflexive and mechanical. The disk flies overhead.

And I watch him again.

He mutters something, not scared enough. Not nearly scared enough.

_Processing…_

Too unafraid, too flippant, as if he doesn't understand that he can die.

_Processing…_

_Processing—_

There is an alarm sounding.

_Audio file (analyzing)—Audio file (identified)_

I turn and run.

I'm halfway up the wall when the gravity changes, and I catch the shift, using it to propel me, pounding across the transparent floor. He hits the ground hard somewhere ahead of me.

I jump, and jump again, turning in the air. I can hear it whistling somewhere outside of my helmet. The program is not stupid, and he tries to remove the floor from beneath me.

I do not like how he makes me land.

. . . I do _not_ like him.

_Whywon'tyoudie?_

I can taste rage.

He is close to me now, and there is a real fear in his eyes when at last he tries to meet mine and finds nothing. I jab at him, quickly and forcefully. I intend to watch the broken pixels fly out of him while I drill into his chest, his side, his limbs. . . I will pick him to piecies…

But not yet. He evades me even as I outdo him. He ducks, I flatten. He rises, I strike, and now he is swinging his disc frantically, desperate wide slashes through the air, totally un-aimed. But as inept as he is, he blocks several of my blows before he cries out, before I finally feel friction on the other end of the weapon. I can smell a burning circuit from somewhere in his arm, and he seizes the wound for a moment before striking at me in turn. It easily avoided, and I am full of warm satisfaction.

I have to land on my hand to do it, but I remove myself from over the hole he's created in the floor and follow him as he falls back. But then, there is the alarm again.

I can hear the impact when the gravity turns and drops him, even without looking at him. I leap again, coming at him just as I did the first time, and this time he in unprepared. He stumbles to his feet now, tiring and stunned and in pain. When he turns he only stares, his mouth agape. It is all he can do before I crash into him. The momentum sends him onto his back, and he skids across the floor. When he stops, I am there, a disc at his throat. He winces, and looks away.

He waits for the blow. It is all over.

All over.

_ERROR—_

_Processing—_

_Err—PROCESSING…_

Below, the crowd roars. They are ready. But I am not so eager. I am angry. I want to know why he still has an arm at all when I am the one that struck him. I turn my head to see. Slow and exact. He is at my mercy. I may take my time.

_Youarenotspecial._

. . . But when I look there is no wound.

Where there should be a gaping hole, and fizzling pixels, there is only a broken circuit and a slice in his armor, from which a thick liquid is welling up. It drips slowly, red and hot, and it turns to so many beady droplets when it leaks onto the floor.

All at once, everything changes inside me.

_ALERT-ALERT-ALERT-ALERT-AL—_

_PROCESSING VISUAL INPUT: IDENTIFYING:_

_PROCESSING, PROCESSING—_

Trying to remember where I have seen this hurts… and everywhere, everywhere there are alarms, all of my controls are shrieking… and yet I feel nothing.

_PROCESSING—_

_SUBSTANCE IDENTIFICATION (acquired) SUBSTANCE IDENTIFICATION:_

_BLOOD (HUMAN):_

_EXECUTE FUNCTION (whoami): _

_WHOAMI:_

_- __**USER**__._

There is an explosion in my head, protocol, code, and orders breaking and internal circuits bursting from the strain somewhere inside of me. There is ringing in my ears.

. . . But the chaos is nothing next to the assuredness that comes next. To the easiness of the only word I have ever heard myself speak.

"User."

He looks up at me when I say it, realizing all at once that maybe he is going to live. His expression might have been thankful for a moment were he not so surprised. I yank him to his feet.

_Look, Clu._

_Look what I have here._

There is no immediate response, but the crowd erupts into boos and hisses that all melt into one ugly roar.

Then:

"Identify yourself, program."

Jarvis's voice is weak and unimpressive. The user is flippant in reply, taking him no more seriously than I do though I hardly notice. Beside him I am buzzing, complacent on the surface, focused… but screaming somewhere underneath.

"I'm not a program!" He says.

Clu stands. I can see it from here.

"IDENTIFY."

The user clenches his fist and I can feel his arm tighten under my hand.

"My name is Sam Flynn!"

So many alarms go off in my programming at once that they actually cancel each other out, and I can't help but look at him for a moment before I turn back to Clu.

And I can't help but have a thought, then. It's some kind of glitch, to make me think, but I do. I think five words. It is a clear and unflinching response, and something I can't name grows hot, hot, clawing its way out of a cage deep inside of me as I do. But I look right at Clu, and I think it.

_Look at what I've brought._

* * *

Author's note: Legacy at last! 0_0 I hoped that lived up to everyone's expectations! I want to thank all of you so much for reading! I'm going to try and keep up the chapter a day pace if possible... please keep letting me know what you think. You guys are great! :D

Thanks again.

-End of line


	44. Disc Weight

Immediately following Fl-

_WARNING: RESTRICTED KEYWORD- UNATHORIZED FILE ACCESS (type: memory, type: attempted access)_

_ACCESS DENIED—_

_REROUTING—_

Immediately following the Sam-user's declaration, the disc platform lowers, as if the user is being hurried away from the eyes of the crowd. We are met on the ground by two guards, who hold him between them, gripping his arms, and lead us away under the stands. The Sam-user looks insolent as they take him from me, offended and entitled. I fall in behind them, still distracted by a constant stream of alerts, confused directives, conflicting reaction files, and various "access denied" warnings.

I feel I must be walking very deliberately . . . doing everything deliberately. I am too distracted by my own internalizing to leave anything to reflex. It is disconcerting.

The user ahead of me is not familiar. His very presence feels foreign. He does not feel great, or intimidating, or strike me as being the maker of anyone. He looks like us, moves like us, as if he is nothing more. He is unimpressive and young.

. . . And yet the faces of the arena maintenance programs that we pass are stricken when they see him. The noise from the crowd is confused instead of angry. The guards do not handle him roughly. They are impressed. They are shocked. They are moved.

I do not like it.

Clu will not like it.

When we finally walk through the doorway to the bridge of Clu's transport, his face is covered and unreadable. But his body language suggests confidence; emphasized, too casual confidence. He has plans, already, for this glorified virus.

The guards shove the Sam-user towards Clu, and he shrugs his shoulders as if to be rid of them.

"Freaks," he mutters.

Clu faces the window and says nothing.

"Where am I?"

No answer.

"Am I on the grid?"

A strange and stupid question.

"Who are you?"

Now Clue responds. I watch him from over the Sam-user's shoulder, waiting for an order. Waiting to be told to kill. It is the only logical solution. To allow him to live will destroy everything.

The grid depends on it.

He is a liability.

He is a fluke.

_I know he is a fluke._

I should kill him.

…_. SOMEONE should kill him…._

He must be destroyed . . .

I do not feel well. Somewhere there is a glitch that renders me useless. I feel ill, frozen, fragmented . . . this idea does not sit well despite the urgency and truth behind it, and I don't understand why. But somewhere in my core, something rebels against it, some forgotten chunk of code that poisons the rest of me with its presence.

_Clu. Clu, you kill him._

_Pleasekillhim._

_. . . Make him go away._

But Clu orders nothing, there is no "to his knees," or even a "Rinzler." Instead he looks calm, even pleased, as his helmet retracts.

"Dad," the Sam-user calls him, and he talks to the Sam-user without correcting him.

I stay quiet, frozen, searching my memory banks for this word, slightly grateful for the distraction. But when I find the definition, its meaning does not apply… The user is confused. He sees the false creator in the face of Clu, and this is how he speaks to him.

I only listen.

I stare at the space on the Sam-user's back just below his disc, without meaning to. I am watching for movement, and yet I am distracted.

I am _thinking._

I am thinking, not in lines of code and commands and protocols, but in so many words. In word after word, a quiet and unintelligible chatter that, now present, I cannot shut off. It morphs from mindless binary to more and more, questions and statements all running together.

_1,0,1,0. _

_Off on._

_Yes no. _

_What is he doing here? _

_What does it mean? _

_Clu will take care of it. _

_. . . I am intrigued._

I tune it out, but I am aware that I am stiff, that I am waiting without flinching with my arms too far away from my body and my legs too ready to move, coiled up and then frozen there, caught between action and inaction, presence and distractedness, usefulness and error.

Clu does not notice. He the Sam-user speak for several nanos, and they look at no one but each other.

I am still as a monument.

"Oh, a lot's happened Sam," Clu says in response to one comment, pacing, "more than you can imagine."

"Disc," he adds brightly,then, and I dart forward and pluck the disc from the Sam-users back. I hand it obediently to Clu, handling it carefully. I can feel the Sam-user's energy in my hands, hot and cold at once, with potential for enormous force, not quite stable. It is a precious and strange item.

_Err—_

It reeks of user.

Clu takes it firmly, un-intimidated, and moves away with it. I fall back quietly, reverent and subdued. It is who I am for Clu.

As this happens the Sam-user's brow crinkles. He looks disconcerted, now, not perplexed by so much as he is suspect of the yellow-clad being before him. Initially shocked, his curiosity is waking up. I am beside him now, and he looks at me as if to take inventory, as if something doesn't quite fit, but cannot establish what and thinks I might provide some answer.

Why he would gravitate to me I have no idea. It fills me with resentment.

I look back at him.

I look in acknowledgement and irritation. My sound rises in my throat, echoing in my helmet, and he raises his eyebrows a little before turning away again. I look ahead of me once again.

"Got it," Clu says, finished with the disc, "I expected more."

Without a second glance he tosses the disc at me, and I catch it without much thought. It sings as it flies through the air, and lands in my hand with a small thud.

The Sam-user beside me is confused now, looking earnestly at Clu, still thinking that he is his…. "father." His disc is heavy in my hand.

Something about its weight sets my mood. I feel a kind of smugness as the Sam-user slowly reacts to Clu's divisiveness, to what he believes is cruelty at the hand of his parent. The feeling quickly grows more sour, and more troubling as I watch.

"I'm not your father, Sam."

Something about Clu's words disturb me. Deep down, some file is forced closed, some feeling is filtered, and some urge, some revelation which should somehow make sense with that phrase is locked down and pushed away, down in my core where no diagnostic can find it.

The room is suddenly very serious. I can feel the tension between them, the disgust from the Sam-user, the sick satisfaction of Clu.

The Sam-user says his name.

Now Clu is pleased, pleased as only Clu can be. He swells, and looks malignant under his smile. Meanwhile the arm holding the user disc feels stiff at my side, a stiffness that is spreading, and I find myself tuning out, away from Clu's satisfaction, staring at the almost-reflection of myself in my helmet. In this light, I can almost see what my own lips look like.

The guards appear again beside us now, and they grasp the Sam-user, tightly this time, and pull him away. Now he struggles.

"WHAT'D YOU DO TO HIM?" He shouts, grasping everything at once. His disc is cool in my hand, a contradiction to his behavior.

"The same thing I'm going to do to you," Clu replies. The words are heavy and threatening, a promise of nothing good, of destruction yet to come.

_He'll ruin you for them._

_Then you will die._

Stiff, mechanical, not so much brooding as blank, I follow the Sam-user and the guards from the room. The transport hums to life around us, and takes off. Below us, the lightcycle grid draws closer.

It is there that the Sam-user will die, a present for his absent father.

…

_- ALERT._


	45. Kickback

I am trying to ignore the effects of his presence. I am trying to pretend they're not there.

But they are.

Something inside of me is awakening, bit by bit. A slow boil. It is a bold something, a dogged, aggressive, searching something that demands answers. A hunter, looking for prey . . . a devotee, looking for salvation.

There is a persistent red light in the left hand edge of my vision.

It is small. It is round. It is there and it is blinking.

Access denied, it says. File corrupted, it says.

Beside it is a progress bar. It is green, too bright. It moves slowly.

Search query, it says.

_Directive, _it says.

From the moment of my birth I have known this light. It comes when I am alone in my cage beneath the stadium. It is there when I am in sleep mode, and when I am first struggling to wake. It comes and it goes, never succeeding, never finding. Usually I ignore it. The query.

But the Sam-user has brought it back, incessant now instead of fleeting.

I have to look past it as the transport docks, as we return to the ground at our destination. The lightcycle grid is visible outside the transport.

It always pleases me to look at it. . .

The guards begin to lead the Sam-user towards the exit. I catch one by his shoulder, and he jerks to a halt once more.

_Wait._

I sound like I am snarling at him. Perhaps I am. All three, the guards and the Sam-user, turn and look at me. The guard I touched looks unnerved, from what I can see of his face.

I hold up the Sam-user's disc, and take it in both hands. The guards understand, and they grab his arms with both hands, holding him steady between them, an I/O alter on which I may place what I will.

I am not gentle. I push him with his disc, twist it into place solidly. It brightens for a moment as it syncs with the few minutes of memory and data it has missed.

My hands are still on it when it does. For a moment there is a kickback, a swell of his information, of his memories, that I did not intend…. Did not know I could receive.

The effect is immediate.

Initially, there is pain.

Excruciating pain.

Then there are the error messages that go with it, a hundred different warnings and alerts all buzzing and shrieking and crying for my attention, ringing in my ears and aching in my head . . . as if I needed one more fiber of me, one more strand of code to hurt more than it already does.

Then there is light. _Blinding_ light, inside my head.

First blue, then white, and then gray as a jumble of images flickers by, images and sounds that make no sense, words that won't translate, that have no meaning in this world. The sound of a cycle, but not our cycles. The feeling of falling, and being caught at the last second. The weird funneling sensation, like being pushed through a too tight tube in pieces, and a glimpse of some dusty screen, before everything again looks like home. A tall and white haired man, talking down to the Sam-User. A voice. The man's voice.

That voice is agony to me. I feel as if someone is driving open the back of my skull, tearing out code in long, ugly, sticky strands of breaking pixels and smoking circuits.

The voice is beautiful, and the loudest and most debilitating error message yet becomes all I can see because of it. Everywhere, red. All alarms, all sirens. It hurts my head still more, and deep, deep, deep in the most basic functions of my programming something breaks open under the pressure of it all.

_I/OStream(type:audio)StreamIdentification(analyzing)Identification:Alan-1WARNING-_

_REDIRECTING, REDIRECTING—_

_EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ENABLED—I/O FROM DISC(SamFlynn) REJECTED-_

_Alan-1Alan-1Alan-1…._

_ALERT-ALERT—_

_DISABLING CONNECTION—ABORT, ABORT, ABORT-_

_Alan-…._

_Name(identification):Alan-1PROCESSING—__**IDENTIFICATION ABORTED-**_

_**-**__rerouting Rinzler program…_

_Execute command: release (subject:SamFlynn)_

_Executing—_

_Re-directing—_

_SEARCH—_

_-Error-_

_Search query (directive) disabled…_

_DELETING MEMORY FILE FOR PREVIOUS (8) NANOCYCLES…_

_REDIRECTING…_

The next thing I am conscious of is a spinning sensation in my head, and I am watching the guards from behind as they take the Sam-user away. Everything hurts. My cycling is too fast, my chest heaving, and yet I am standing so normally, almost dumbstruck. To everyone else it seems that nothing has happened, but I feel ill… glitchy… viral...

Angry.

_Elated._

I move towards the wall and stand against it. Everything is a blur. Everything aches. Something inside me has been shaken, and my control is gone. A thousand feelings are coursing through me, so many that my filters are not adequate to dilute them. Rage and joy and awe and anger and resentment and sorrow and yearning and pleasure and shock, all at once, all together, until they all cancel out into rage.

Blind, thirsty rage.

For the user.

For the Sam-user is all there is. He is the prey, the sacrifice, the only object.

How I get to my place below the stands, my place of waiting in case I am needed, I hardly know, but somehow I get there. But I can't think. Can't watch the combatants in their blue and green, even though Clu's yellow is among them.

I am too busy. Busy with him. A nemesis. An _obstruction._

Busy studying.

Busy waiting.

And I do not wait long.

* * *

Author's Note: Thanks to ScribeOfRED for pointing out some errors in the last chapter. I had a full day today, but I'll be doing some edits in the near future. Sorry about that guys, and thank you for putting up with my typos! And of course, thank you for reading. :)

-End of line


	46. Failed Chase

They hold me below the first glassy level of the grid, between the top and second floors. I imagine that this is to keep me out of sight. My approach to the referee position is not subtle enough to avoid my being a distraction otherwise.

A floor above me, the Sam-user stands alone. He holds his disc as if it will save him, a futile bravado. He has done well, so far. Ridden well enough. But now he is alone. He is alone and on foot, and Clu comes at him like a storm over the sea. Coming, coming, gaining….

Until he doesn't.

In a clatter of yellow pixels, and a spray of cycle parts and bright light, my master crashes to the ground. He skids across the arena floor, rolling and tumbling and sliding with an ungracious clothing-on-surface squeaking sound. The foreign vehicle responsible for this drives right past him, swings wide, and comes to a stop beside the Sam-user.

My baton is already in my hand. Two grid monitoring programs appear beside me. I, meanwhile, am pitched forward on my feet, caught in a near-crouch, looking through a one-sided screen that allows me to see the grid without its combatants ever seeing me.

The Sam-User hesitates.

The female voice, the automated announcer, speaks. My permission to move.

The Sam-user starts to climb into the weird, four-wheeled vehicle. The gate goes up in front of me.

My cycle is already alive beneath me when it does.

Immediately I am on the grid, using an inverted gravity to cling to the ceiling. I have full monitoring functions here, and nothing is off limits. Here, I can manipulate what I like. The grid answers to me like an accessory to central programming, an old bit to its home program. I hardly even have to think.

It _knows _me.

It has for a long time.

The two guards are on either side of me, just a little behind. Here, I am the authority. It is me who leads and they who follow, though our goal is one and the same.

_Destroy the rogue program._

_Destroy the Sam-user._

. . . Get rid of that atrocious, illegal vehicle.

I can see a glimpse of yellow under my cycle as we fly silently past Clu, who kneels a level above. It is my cue to surface.

I have to rock my cycle, build some momentum, but the grid gives easily when I ask it to, the mobile and ever-changing floor flipping seamlessly beneath me, putting me right side up in my pursuit.

I must catch him.

Damned elusive prey, he plays by no natural rule. I must fix him. I must stop him. I must confront him.

I _must_ catch him.

The second guard, the one to my right, peels away and moves ahead, making some comment about cutting them off which fizzles in my helmet's earpiece. That I can hear the programs I am supposed to work with is a default of grid-monitoring in groups, a function that switches on when the cycles do. Of course, I say nothing in reply. Instead I watch, waiting to see how this plan will work.

As expected, it doesn't.

The program driving the vehicle (some up to date and un-recognizable variant on a basic overland lightrunner,) swerves into him, and easily sends the second guard and his cycle flying. They both explode in a shower of sparks and pixels, skittering away across the floor.

I arc around behind the lightrunner, and the first guard follows. I am not interested in getting so close.

Not yet.

It is a wise move, for the driver's next response is to drop micro-grenades.

Not surprising, really. Not to me. I've already let go of the steering mechanism of my lightcycle and released my feet by the time the bomb goes off beneath me. The guard is not so lucky, and it is only me who rides the inertia of my cycles sudden end, only me who is engaging a baton before he has turned once in the air, only me who lands again with a second cycle already rezzed beneath him, heavy yet agile. It swerves for just a moment as it lands, weighty and unruly, before I can balance it out beneath me. I have to fight it, holding it firmly, toggling my weight between my hands to keep it upright. It skids a little before I can take off the way I'd like to. It is a minute adjustment, a good landing, but it slows me by microscopic increments that I cannot afford.

They are running now, charging for the wall of the stadium.

Why their next move of blowing a hole in that wall is so completely unsurprising to me is uncertain, but it seems somehow like the obvious choice in my mind, despite their grid-equipped tires. I lean into my cycle, lean hard, and I race after them. I fly. The speed turns everything to a blur of black and blue and white, but I can sense that they are outrunning me.

_Go._

But I don't. Not much. Somewhere in the back of my head I know that I will not catch them before they escape the grid, and it holds me back even while the rest of me is clamoring to race after them at maximum speed.

The jump I could make, after all.

But that landing I could not.

This is a grid cycle…. The only kind I am permitted to have without special assignment.

_You must regret that now, Clu…_

I follow them to the last. I am on their heels, so, so close. I can smell the heat from their engine, taste the user in the air, I am so close. Hungry, hungry and close.

_IMUSTCATCHHIM…_

The need is overpowering, raw and nagging and persistent. It consumes me.

_Go, go._

_Get him._

_Catch the Sam-user._

_Confront the user—_

_…The users…._

Angry need gnaws at me from the inside, heavy and hot in my chest. Faster, faster, I am a perfect missile, but I am too late. The lightrunner disappears through the hole they have punched in the stadium wall.

I pull up at the last second. I do not take my eyes off of them as they go. I sit up, stand above my cycle with the weight of it balanced between my knees, suddenly aware that my chest is heaving . . . that I am practically panting, but I cannot bring myself to care.

I watch them until there is not even a speck of light left of them to be seen against the cold and jagged backdrop of the outlands.

I will not forget this.

They will not get away.

_. . . How did they get away?_


	47. Guilty

Time ticks by. The Sam-user is on the loose.

But Clu is unbothered.

This disturbs me.

-_Error—_

I ignore this notice as I do the others. That conclusion isn't an error… And if it is, it shouldn't be. It is a valid reaction to Clu's behavior. It is as if he _wanted the_ Sam-user to get away. If he is irritated, it is because of a lack of retaliation. It is because he is simply tired of waiting.

This makes no sense to me.

_Thisisnotagame…_

_-ERROR: insubordinate behavior_

_Re-directing-_

It takes me a moment to re-claim my thoughts.

I liked things better before the user came, when there were fewer to claim, when there was nothing to chew over, to mull over, to brood about. Nothing to fight myself for, no battle just to be inside my own head.

But there is a battle now, and brood I do.

I cannot stop thinking about the lightrunner, getting away.

The user, getting away.

Time is ticking by and I think of only this, of losing them. Of missing. Of escaped quarry.

They should NOT HAVE GOTTEN AWAY.

No one gets away from me. Not ever. I never let _anyone _escape. Derezzed, alive, screaming, or half dead, it makes no difference to me. But they never,

Ever,

Ever,

Get away.

_So why did they?_

What did I do wrong?

_What did I do?_

How did they make it when no one else ever has, when I have never allowed anyone or anything to get the better of me, not when I was so able to predict their next move, so fluid in my pursuit, when every advantage was stacked in my favor?

_Why did the user go free?_

Why did _He _escape me, when no one else does?

_-err—_

_. . . What does it MEAN?_

_Why_

_Did they_

_ESCAPE?_

I have no answer for myself. But I will find one. If I have to hunt the Sam-user, his ally in the lightrunner, if I must hunt the false creator himself, I will find one. If I must open every bank in my systems, scan every redacted memory, I will. If I have to break into every file, no matter how much pain in the name of punishment it will cause me, I will. I have to know. I will not sleep until I understand.

I must understand.

. . . Even as I think this, to the tune of warnings and internal rebuttals, a green progress bar appears:

_Search query: directive._

_Searching-_

_Searching-_

_Directive (primary): Serve Clu (administrative) program._

_. . ._

_. . ._

The query runs itself again.

* * *

_Author's note: I'm going on a short vacation (am supposed to be back the 17th, I believe,) so I really wanted to get two of these up for you guys instead of the one. That said, I have re-read and re-read, but it is 4:00am and I haven't slept. I apologize if I missed any typos, and I will absolutely check again as soon as I can. But again, since that may be a day or so depending on how well travelling goes, I've decided the post it now and trust myself to have caught anything major. If I'm wrong, please feel free to call me out on it/chew me out. In fact, I encourage it._

_That and any other form of critique or reviewing or babbling that you can throw at me. XD_

_Anyway, happy reading, and thank you guys for sticking with me for so long!_

_-End of line_


	48. Perfection

I am not there when the news arrives. I am in my cell, my private little cage.

It is dark here, the ambient white that does light it comes from a few narrow bands of circuitry which follow the hallway and the door frames at sharp right angles. The force-field in the doorway –the only opening in or out- is transparent, but shimmers periodically as if some bodiless something has brushed past it.

At first I know nothing except that they have come to get me. It is Jarvis that lets me out, accompanied by a guard and looking distressed. I give him a long look as I step through the doorway. He seems to shrink from his own reflection in my helmet. It is dark in here with it on. Too dark for reason. There is a polarizing effect to the helmet itself, but that is not enough for this cage.

But I don't take it off. I can't.

Jarvis lets me walk ahead of him, and the guard follows his lead.

"We've discovered the location…" he says from behind me, trying much too hard to gloat when it is obvious he can think of nothing more uncomfortable than addressing me directly, "of Kevin Flynn."

_WARNING._

I stop, and wheel around to face him. He is so startled that he runs backwards into the guard.

_What do you mean?_

All I hear is a rumbling, snarling, broken engine kind of noise coming from inside of my chest, not words, but he seems to understand. I can feel my lips peeled back over my teeth, in a kind of seething, threatening expression.

I don't usually wonder what I look like. But right now I wish I knew. I wish he knew. I think his reaction would be amusing.

He swallows hard and rights himself before he answers me.

"We have traced a rogue cycle to his location," he says, trying to sound casual. It disgusts me. He is so flippant. A fool. I lean in towards him, looking him hard in the eye. Though he cannot see this, he seems to feel it.

_This is not a game._

This does not seem to translate very clearly, for once the terror leaves his eyes he looks just as insolent as before. I snarl at him, intentionally this time, and turn my back on him again.

He isn't worth the time. Idiocy can't be cured.

I walk on ahead of him, and he makes no further attempts at addressing me.

_Bit-brain._

My time alone in my cell with nothing but my incessant thoughts has rendered my language files a little more. . . colorful. More lively. In the few lapses between my constant broodings on the Sam-user, I have been brooding over myself, and I have found that I have more personality than I thought I had. It is at once a needless distraction and a pleasing realization to find that I am something more than what I do. To think.

I am thinking now.

Again.

Still.

_Samflynn—_

_ERROR._

This is a joke to Jarvis. This is a game to Clu. For me it is something else.

It is a hunt. It is a fine line. It is dangerous.

And I can't even explain why. Not in so many words. But it is. It is a hazardous, uncertain turn of events, and there is more to it than I can see clearly. Some vital detail that drifts just beyond my reach. I can feel a sort of hum in the air.

Chaos beginning.

A shift in the norm.

Already the grid is buzzing. While Clu plays, their excitement is rising. While his plans unfold, some discord I can feel, but cannot place, begins just below his nose.

The users will destroy everything. Already, they are changing the grid.

_The Sam-user must be destroyed._

The false creator, too.

_WARNING—_

Almost as if I've done something wrong, this thought sends a bolt of pain from the base of my neck all the way into the bottom of my feet. I grit my teeth against it, and try to ignore its implications. But it is hard. When thinking the right thing feels wrong, when it hurts me to do so, pretending it isn't happening becomes just about impossible. I wonder if Clu can tell how much is wrong when I meet him at the top of the ramp that leads down to the holding cells. But he doesn't seem to notice. He is too busy being satisfied with himself, like a grid bug sucking on an exceptionally juicy chunk of code. There is something almost disturbing about this.

And something almost disgusting.

He smiles at me.

"Rinzler," he says, and I duck my head towards my chest. I stay that way until he waves his hand to release me.

Jarvis appears behind me.

"I told him what we've found," he simpers.

Clu looks at me. I have nothing to say to him, but my sound roars in my ears.

_I don't like it._

He entirely misinterprets what I'm telling him, however, and smiles. He makes a smug, satisfied sound in the back of his throat.

"Let's go."

But misinterpretation or not, there is nothing to do but follow him. Follow, and appreciate the opportunity to be useful. Follow, and do my job.

When we reach the transport, parked near the stadium, a drone of the black guard is at the helm.

This is unacceptable.

I approach him, and reach in front of him to take the controls. His head snaps up and he begins to protest.

_Don't._

I step closer to him, looking down my nose at him from an unnecessarily close range.

_I'm not asking._

He falters, and closes his mouth again. My sound roars in my ears as I glower at him, and a moment later he steps away. I take my place contentedly at the controls, exactly where should be. I _am_ the best pilot we have.

I _should_ be the one that takes us to Fl—

_-warning—_

. . . To the false creator. It is my responsibility. I know this in every line of code, in every line of command, in every back-up and every file. It is my duty.

_Search query: directive. . . . . . . ._

_NO. _

I know my directive.

_Serve Clu program._

_. . . . ._

Clu _is_ my directive.

We are hardly in the air when he calls our attention to him. I cannot look at him now, but I listen while I enter the coordinates from the cycle -given to me by Jarvis- into the navigational controls.

"Programs," he says.

I hear shuffling as the guards around him straighten up to listen.

"We are about to reveal, once and for all, the final lie of Kevin Flynn."

Clu's voice is dripping with satisfaction. It seems. . . preemptive to me. But he's Clu, and he knows what he is doing. Knows better than anyone.

"The _lie,_" he continues, his voice rising, "of his surrender. The _lie _of his demise!"

This seems like an unnecessary point to make. The false creator's death was never confirmed.

_No one here believes that._

The only programs that do are the deranged, that and the devout who cannot accept the difference between forced exodus and the simple truth of their own abandonment.

_It's a waste of words._

But Clu talks on.

"This is where the shadow of the users ends. For a thousand cycles, we have built this grid to perfection, and now we have chased the selfish creator to the ends of our world. Today, he is ours, and our dreams become reality. Today, we open the final door-"

. . . I have no idea what he is talking about.

"—The door to new and better alliances, to new worlds. It begins here, with the end of Kevin Flynn."

Some file somewhere in my memory struggles to open. There is an urgency to it that is unsettling, but I can't review it. All I am allowed access to are keywords that describe it, and even those are corrupted.

_File highlights: initiative, Clu, "real world," Rectifier, Dillin-(corrupted key)…_

_Rectifier _is the only word which means anything. For as long as I can remember worthy soldiers who have survived the games have been sent to it, moving in droves for repurposing. Clu can do that en masse on Rectifier, and it waits near the sea with its teeming masses of repurposes for an attack of some kind. That is all I know. I am a . . . a vicious tool for marinating order, nothing more, and that is all I have ever needed to know. If I were smarter, I wouldn't ask now, either.

But I can't help it. I am perfectly capable of rational thought, and now that he's drawn my attention to it, all at once I've figured it out.

It makes sense to me.

_. . . ._

_. . . . . . ._

_Assessing keyword "real world"-_

I look back at Clu over my shoulder, incredulous.

_No._

_-Error-_

_NO._

_That's impossible._

But I can see in his face that it is.

_WARNINGWARNINGWAR-_

_That's __**insane.**_

I know it is. Even the parts of my code that Clu wrote with his own hands says that it is. The users are _dangerous, _they are _oppressors, _ they will use us, use us, and _abandon _ us if given the chance. They do not want us. They do not want to face their creations. They do not want to share their world. The want to _use. _And if we go to them, or if they come back to us, they will _destroy us. _I know this. _Clu taught me this._

Users are evil.

They are abuse and neglect and evil, and yet they are omnipotent. They are power. They are law. They _made _ us, and they can most certainly _end us._

And they will.

That is why _we _must find _them _first. Find them and ensure that we are left alone.

_I have to find them. . ._

I have to stop them.

_ButwhowillstopClu—ERROR—_

_No._

Clu must be right. This must be right…

_Clu is always right…..?_

Blissfully ignorant of the desperate situation in my head, Clu talks on, utterly unaware of how ludicrous he sounds.

"Flynn's disc will soon be ours," he says evenly, "and the possibilities. . ." I can hear the smile in his voice even without looking at him, "are endless. Our world will soon be limitless. _WE _will achieve what the users never have. . ."

There is tense, eager silence for a moment. I glance at him again, and see that he is glowing, quite literally, his circuits bright as his eyes, and smiling with such satisfaction it is almost nauseating. He waits to tell us what, exactly, we will achieve, reveling in the attention. I can see it in his every feature. He has them hooked. Perplexed, and eager, and spellbound.

And he likes it.

Something in my chest seems to clench up, and something inside me drops, some chunk of code in free fall. I feel ill.

…_He likes it too much._

He likes it and it makes him blind. Blind and ridiculous.

It's. . . repulsive.

This thought is punished by a bolt of pain down the back of my neck. For a moment I stiffen over the controls. But Clu neither notices nor cares. Instead, he at last finishes his thought.

"We," he says, his voice a revolting, yet tempting whisper now, "will achieve _perfection."_

Unbidden, four words pop into my head, bringing yet another disciplinary spike of pain, this one between my eyes.

But I can't help but think it.

_What kind of perfection?_

* * *

_Author's note: _Many thanks to Jax Solo for reviewing these chapters (this and the next one,) and for helping me figure out where I wanted to go with them. I am much happier with the final product than I was with what I had at first, and I can't thank you enough for helping me work them out!

And, as always, thank you to all of you who have been reading!

-End of line


	49. I Fight

I am preoccupied for the remainder of the flight. It is trek over a monotonous and unwelcoming landscape in slate gray and black, the same geometric patterns in every surface of every rock. It is foggy, and the ground below is covered in dust. In short, there is nothing to catch my attention, nothing to distract me from the nagging sensation that Clu might be . . . overreaching.

This is an opinion which gets me in trouble . . . again. Half of my body is aching as a result of such thoughts.

This does, however, have the intended effect. Intermittent agony has no appeal, and it is a needlessly risky distraction at a time when I can afford no such thing. By the time we have reached the location indicated by the captured cycle I have –albeit forcibly- removed the thought from my head.

The only thing which doesn't change is the urgent compulsion to hunt the users. _If_ there is a problem, than their presence is the impetus for it. _That _is what I remind myself to keep the other thoughts at bay.

_Find them find them find them find them…._

At that moment the scanner dings and an entrance, a tunnel of some kind, is highlighted on the control panel in front of me.

Out the window a gap in rock face confirms this finding. It is dark, but the ambient florescence of power is visible from inside. It is cut from the face of the rock like a balcony, a decidedly unnatural construction.

There is nowhere to land up here though, so I bring us down at the base of the rock tower in which the false creator's hiding place is nestled. From the ground I cannot help but notice that the shape of the seemingly natural feature is reminiscent of the first i/o towers Flynn designed us, the ones which fell out of use so early on.

. . . I don't know why I remember that. I am distracted today.

_It needs to stop._

I am about to be angry with myself, but in the next moment we disembark, which seems to help. As soon as my foot meets the first stair and the cold air of the outlands swirls up around us, I am on full alert. It is not enough to follow Clu, I look ahead of him, to each side, scanning for something, anything in this wasteland. But nothing comes up.

We are alone.

Clu, Jarvis and I descend first, and we are followed by two guards. Several airborne units stay with the transport. Clu's expression is smug, but Jarvis looks around nervously beside me.

This place is unwelcoming. Programs were not meant to come here. It is dark, brutal. The ground is cold beneath me. There is nothing in front of us but stone.

The rock face up ahead is so smooth that if the scanner had not detected the entrance, we would never have known it was there, which explains why no scout has ever found it before. From here, I cannot see an entrance of any kind. We are almost upon it by the time the faint outline of a door becomes visible.

The door doesn't budge when we approach it, though. It is barely detectible itself, and whatever mechanism opens it is totally invisible to even the most thorough scans.

Clu looks to me to open it despite this. With a nod, I approach.

I kneel at the base of the rock face, and run my hand along the cool surface. I can feel the joint between the door and the wall. I push. Nothing happens.

But with my hand flat against it, I can almost feel the energy in it. This rock is not a natural feature at all. The circuits that run down my fingers shine a little more brightly when I touch it, throwing a hot and vibrant orange glow up against the rocks.

I trace the outline of the door from the ground to the upper edge of the frame. It is made up of several overlapping slabs of rock, each closing in on a central point from a different direction. I pause over the place where they intersect.

_Come on._

I put my hands on it again and give it another push, squarely in the center now. It seems like the thing to do.

_OPEN. _

As if on my command, as if it knows me, this time it does. The panels slide upwards and outwards, and the lights flicker on in a long hallway in front of us. I stand where I am and scan it . . . until I am interrupted by Clu walking past me. He is impatient, heading down the corridor with his entourage before I confirm the safety of the place, without even looking at me in acknowledgement.

_. . . . ._

I am not certain that I approve of this, but I follow without complaint. Not that someone who doesn't speak unless forced ever complains.

. . . Sometimes I think Clu did that to me on purpose . . .

_ERROR._

_Redirecting-_

There is a spot near the end of the hallway where the lightrunner must usually be parked. While Clu goes ahead, I squat down and touch the ground there. I don't know what I expected this unorthodox inspection would accomplish, and it is to my surprise that my touch draws the shadowy imprint of tires to the surface. I appear to be the only one that can see this, but who can say. Everyone else has passed me. They haven't even looked.

I hurry after them, but something about their dismissal irritates me.

Clu, at least, should be paying more attention. For his safety.

As a leader.

_. . . Something is wrong with him today._

If I were less inclined to be punished again, I might even go so far to say that there has been something wrong with him since the Sam-user arrived. But I don't feel like getting hurt any more than I already have, and I lock that thought away on my own before any of my usual auto-responses can antagonize me for it.

There is a darkened transport pad at the very end of the hall, large enough to bring a cycle down on. It easily accommodates the five of us, and that is where the rest of them have stopped. I take my place to Clu's left. Then, as if on cue, the transport pad lifts beneath us, into a cavernous shaft above our heads. It illuminates beneath our feet as it rises.

The cavern gives way to a darkened chamber.

We rise slowly, and I watch as the stone walls give way to the floor of a room, and as the floor gives way to the room in full. Ahead of me is the rectangular opening which I saw from the recognizer, a screen over it. The dancing patterns of light from swirling power play off of the natural walls, throwing a patchy and glimmering liquid silhouette onto the ceiling. There is a table nearby, and a chair, and a sort of inlet in the wall where power flows from ground to ceiling in a series of irregular droplets, an apparently aesthetic feature that looks like nothing I have a name for. I eye it all with the utmost suspicion.

Clu is the first to move off the transport. I follow in perfect sync.

As he steps forward, the floor lights up beneath him. It seems too bright after all that darkness. It stops me where I stand, too much. Too much input. Too much information. Too strange. Too…

_Too…_

There is a word for what this is, an uncomfortable word, that I can't quite place. I try to ignore it, but it nags at me quietly from some file at the back of my mind. Whatever it is, though, it does not change the sensation which washes over me as I attempt to grasp what I am seeing.

It is a feeling of helplessness.

I can go no further. Even if I did want to, I couldn't. I feel as if I am standing very close to the edge of some great chasm, and though part of me wants very badly to step off, every logical and functioning line of code in my body disagrees. But that small, glitching part of me is convinced that there is something out there in that white-lit space that it needs, that it must identify with.

The rest of me knows that this is a very bad idea.

This compulsion, then, only increases the distrust with which I view the room. I scan it from top to bottom, sweeping my head back and forth slowly, reading into every crack, every crevice, every fissure in the natural rock features, every current in the pools of power, and into the spaces between every one of the mysterious rectangular objects lined up on one of the shelves.

Most of the items in this room are utterly foreign.

There is a thing hanging from the ceiling that serves no purpose, but which refracts the light in a way that I assume is supposed to be visually pleasing, over the table. There are pillows . . . in the middle of the floor. The rectangle-things along the wall are varied in size and shape and color and have words on them that provide only a vague and useless indication of their contents or their reason for being.

And then, even the atmosphere itself is off. It is . . . not nauseating, exactly, but overwhelming. It makes my head spin. The whole space is so full of user, so full of smell and sight and sensation.

I do not like it, and I do not trust it. And yet I am awed by it.

I am rooted to the spot.

Uncertain.

_Error—_

_Assessing—_

_Diagnostic(initiating):Rinzler program. . ._

Meanwhile, the search query that never gives up begins again. Like some glitchy reflex, it runs itself periodically without my ever asking it to do so.

_Search query: Directive-_

_Directive. . ._

_Directive-_

_ERROR._

I try to ignore it, not an easy task. Not in this. . . disturbing place.

I am not afraid of this, though. This is not fear. I have no concept of fear.

This is something else.

Something like disbelief mixed with uncertainty. Something _other_. It is very near suspicion, but isn't. There is trepidation attached to it, but it comes also with the fleeting and disconcerting feeling of joy. This place fills me with some kind of expectation.

But there is also a bitterness that it inspires. Resentment. Hurt, almost.

_Almost._

This place is so wrong.

Alarms are ringing in my head. Something aches. I am not sure how many times I have looked back and forth at this room. I do not know how _long_ I have looked. Jarvis and Clu have both ventured out into the space, but still I cannot.

Something that tastes disgustingly like reverence won't let me.

But this is not our space.

_. . . It shouldn't be anyone's space._

This thought is so fleeting I can't make any sense of it before it is locked away in some file I can't re-open. A memory I'm not permitted to have.

It is all very disquieting.

And I hate it.

I hate the users for it.

Since the Sam-user came it has seemed to me as if the footing has started falling out from beneath me, as if the whole grid is being re-arranged around me and I am simply processing too slowly to understand it, too dumbstruck to function. Everything is changing, and I seem to be the only one that sees it, but I can do nothing to fix it, and everything is backwards.

_Everything is breaking._

Clu is breaking. I am breaking. I can feel the cracks, physically feel them, like itching, aching old scars across my chest.

But I will not panic. I won't.

That is not my way.

I am a hunter. I will find my prey. I will eliminate my problem. The Sam-user. The false creator.

_I will kill them both._

. . . Again this thought causes me pain, more than any thought I have had yet. In desperation, trying to be rid of it, I turn my attention to Clu, instead. A source of stability. I have, after all, decided that he must be right in the end, even if the user's renewed presence has served to complicate things. So long as he is here, we will be able to fix things. Clu is always right.

_I serve Clu . . . . . . . _

At this moment two small objects on the mantle (I believe that is the word for that protrusion of the wall,) have his attention. Elsewhere, Jarvis is holding one of the rectangular things with words on it… I don't know how I know, but I can tell that he is holding it wrong.

_Idiot._

I shake my head and look back to Clu. His expression is hesitant now, intrigued and cautiously assessing.

This is an improvement.

This is a logical response.

Curious, he moves to the shiny object above the table, and taps it. It makes a sort of tinkling sound and refracts light in sporadic patterns as it moves. He then turns his attention to a bowl of… _things _on the table. They are hard and silver, another decoration of some kind, and he picks one up and seems to study his reflection in it for a moment.

This behavior is normal.

It is a response I understand.

For my part, I am still overwhelmed. I am still uncomfortable. The predominant feeling I am registering is still frustrated, almost vengeful anger. I look out the window at the far end of the room, trying to ignore this. Trying to quiet my mind.

But it is raging. _I _am still raging.

I can see Tron City from here.

He has been so close all along.

The false creator was _right here. _Within view of us. For a thousand cycles, he has been perching uselessly on our back doorstep, just… _sitting._

Something about that fact is distressing, more distressing than anything else that's happened so far. That tiny, glitchy part of me which has been protesting so unhelpfully at the back of my head falls silent, as if this has somehow discouraged it.

_Good riddance._

My reverie is broken by a sudden shout. My head snaps up in time to see Clu sweeping his arm across the table, hurtling its contents across the room. They crash to the ground with a loud and garish clatter.

And Clu. . .

Clu _laughs._

He just stands their and laughs.

_Warningwarningwarning-_

_Behavioral analysis (Clu program): irrational—proceed with caution_

Irrational?

_Clu?_

I want to question this, but there is something very dark in his eyes.

Something unstable.

I feel a sinking in my chest, a kind of dread. My own programming tries to punish me for reacting this way, but it's true, and I can't help it. A small war between pain and programming ensues, tearing through my internal circuits, disrupting every other function. For a moment I am sure I will shut down entirely. It is too much. This is all too much…

_WARNING: OVERLOAD—RINZLER PROGRAM—_

_ATTEMPTING REDIRECT—_

_Search query…_

. . . _Oh, of course._

This only adds exasperation to the mix, but I cannot get it to stop.

_NOW IS NOT THE TIME…_

But the green progress bar is moving across my vision, and I can see a menu of file names being checked off, one by one, as the search carries on despite my insistence that it stop. Meanwhile, I am certain I am going to freeze completely, and someone will have to come and re-start me.

This realization frustrates me, which is the last thing I need.

_Hold it together, Rinzler!_

_-searching-_

_RINZLER!_

_Query result processing—_

_..._

_Findtheusersfindtheusers . . . _

I repeat this like a mantra, desperate for a goal that I can focus on, something to keep me stable while Clu degrades before my eyes. It just happens to be the first thing I seize on, and it works.

_Searching-_

_Findthemfindthemfindthem-_

_Search-ing-_

_Results processing—_

_Processing. . ._

_Query result: I . . .__** I FIGHT**__-_

_**ALERTALERTALERTALERTALERT**__— _

_**REDIRECTING-EMERGENCY- REDIRECTING-**_

_**DELETING MEMORY FILE—**_

_**PROCESSING-**_

_Redirect complete. Deletion processing…_

_Resume normal functions—_

The next thing I know I am watching Clu without a thought in my head. Where a moment ago there was chaos, there is now a perfect calm. Whatever has just occurred is being kept from me, though I am sure somehow that it was important.

But I can't be bothered to worry about it.

Not now.

Clu, too, has calmed. His laughter is gone, and he is studying the view of the city. Then, all at once, he turns around.

"Let's move," he says, and he does. Back to the transport pad, back down to the tunnel, back to the transport, as if he cannot get there fast enough. As quickly as we have come to this place, we are gone.

. . . I know somehow that we are never coming back.


	50. Prediction

I can't say I regret leaving the false creator's hideout. I don't regret it at all.

Almost the instant we're out in the open air again, all of the conflicting feelings and functions, and all of the rage, and all of the confusion drain out of me at once. I am left as cool and collected as I am capable of being. Ready to work, and ready for Clu.

Out here in the chill of the outlands, in the fresh air, I can be rational about his behavior. I can choose to cope with this sensibly.

_I can ignore the warning signs._

I refuse to believe that he is unstable. He has every reason to be irregular in his behavior at this time, and I have elected not to listen to the quiet, pinging alert at the back of my mind that says there is any more to it than that from this point onward. If there is a problem, it is because of the users, not because of Clu.

Not. Because. Of Clu.

He knows what he's doing, and when we do find the users, he'll prove it. He will do the right thing.

It's just that simple.

I have let doubt in myself complicate this issue. I realize that now. But Clu will do the right thing, in the end, and so will I. Whatever it was that I realized up there in that weird room, with all of its pointless objects and feeling of user, has assured me of this.

I don't have to be able to review the file to know I have just proven that I have the strength to ignore even the strongest corruptions. Whatever it was that happened, whatever it was that my relentless searching turned up, was as cataclysmic of an error as I am capable of making. . . _But I resisted. _I CAN resist.

It is that knowledge which allows me to be so calm now.

I have my duty. I will fulfill it.

_IserveClu . . ._

_. . . ._

Up there, something momentous happened. I know that. Like all momentous things that I am not allowed to understand, like every disruptive memory which I am locked out of, it leaves a disturbing echo. I am not unaware of the fact that something has changed.

But _I have persevered_ _anyway._ I can _let it go. _And I can_ do my job. _

I am strong enough.

The users have escaped me before, but it will not happen again. When we find them, I will not be overwhelmed as I was in Flynn's hideout. I will not stand around and watch them retreat ever again. The next time I encounter them, I now know it will be different. I _swear_, it will be different. Next time, I will not falter. Next time, I will do exactly what I was meant to do.

I am sure of it.


	51. Survival

Our next stop is the End of Line Club. By the time we arrive, the airborne guard unit that had been sent with a recognizer has been reduced to piles of orangey pixels scattered across the ground. There are blue and white ones, too, but the orange stands out.

I am very much at home amongst this kind of carnage. It sets my mind at ease, despite the powerful reminder of the users' negative influence that it provides. Carnage is something I understand, even carnage which has been swept away into the corners of a room. Castor is meticulous that way.

He likes to make an impression.

Of course, so does Clu. He enters with a transport and three recognizer's worth of personnel, looking far too friendly considering the obvious failure of the Black Guard to capture the users.

This will not end well for Castor, and I find that gratifying. I have never liked him.

"The boy and Flynn are gone!" Clu calls, grinning on the surface and seething underneath.

"I presume, your excellency, they perished in the elevator," Castor replies. His smile is genuine.

How naïve.

Clu looks unimpressed.

"You presume?" he says, as he comes to a halt in front of the garish looking program and the siren beside him. She is not so ridiculous as her companion, and she watches Clu carefully out of the corner of her eye. Castor just grins, forcibly now.

Clu looks to me.

"Find them," he says.

I nod curtly and spin on my heel, retreating back the way I came.

I appreciate this singular objective. I am more than happy to pursue it, though there is enough gravity to it that I can't bring myself to be too pleased. I feel intent, more than anything, as I make my way out of the hole where the elevator once was, into the transport, and then out a small side exit to the nearest recognizer.

I am more than qualified to take it, and I do. The controls feel right in my hands as it revs to life, and it flies cleanly under my guidance.

I do not bother to check the ground-level for the remains of the elevator. The scanner can tell me that it isn't there. Instead I swing around the tower on which the End of Line sits, skimming the ground and backtracking in the opposite direction of the portal.

If they survived, they have done so underground.

Of that I am certain.

The only way to get there, however, is through an access port in the opposite direction. It looks like a large hole in the ground with a screen over it. I lower the recognizer into it. Once there, I have to backtrack yet again to the base of the tower.

The base of the tower itself is surrounded by an open atrium after the ground level, and I swing the recognizer around it in a smooth arc to land. As I expected, the elevator is sitting neatly at the foot of the the tower, utterly undamaged. I set the recognizer down beside it.

I do not hurry when I reach the ground. I do not rush. I tread deliberately, aware of the change in the air here. An empty solar sailor bay is to my left, and I am utterly alone. But the presence of the users is strong. As is another presence, almost equally foreign, that I seem to remember from a long time ago.

When all of my senses are honed in on a single objective, I am a sight to behold.

Right now, I am aware of _everything._

I can almost taste the users on the air as I draw nearer to the elevator, I can feel where they paused, where they changed direction. I could almost follow them just from that.

Yet there is nowhere they could be hiding. From here, I can think of only one place where they would have gone . . . but I have to confirm it.

Bending down, slowly lowering myself on one knee, I press my open hand to the floor. Just as I was able to see a shadow from the lightrunner below Flynn's hideout, I can see a shadow of their footsteps now . . . better than a shadow. Precise, glowing imprints of their feet seem to rise up from the code of the city itself, a beacon that is easy to follow. Two sets of footprints trail off to my left. I follow them with a slow turn of my head.

_Solar sailor._

They are going to Rectifier.

oOoOoOo

Recognizers were not built for speed, and I have to lean into the throttle with all of my energy to catch up to the sailor. It takes time to do so, valuable time. This irritates me.

_Everything irritates you._

_. . ._

Sometimes I'm not certain why I am as angry as I am. This is one of those times. If I had a plan for what I am going to do when I catch up to them, perhaps this reaction would make more sense. As it is, I'm not sure why I am so distressed over the speed of pursuit, and not more worried about my lack of tactical advantage.

Speed makes no difference if I do nothing when I get there.

_Think, Rinzler._

I find it ironic that less than a milicycle ago the word "think" wasn't even a part of my language banks, and now here I am, ordering myself around with it.

Think.

What good is it to think, really?

The longer I am alone with the capability to do so, the less I like it. The novelty has worn off, and constant distress has taken its place. But I try not to acknowledge my on thoughts. I try not to mull over what I cannot help, what I'm obviously not supposed to understand. After all, Clu programed me to lock certain files for a reason.

Probably because he knew that I would do this.

I have one task. One duty to complete. Find the users. And yet, here I am, letting myself get distracted by my own head when I should be focused on catching them… on pleasing Clu. I should be thinking in one of my mantras. Findthemfindthemfindthem. Serve, serve, serve.

But I'm not.

Flying a recognizer is too reflexive a task to keep me occupied, the act of following the sailor too mundane to demand much of me. Leaving Flynn's hideout, I collected myself. I had something to do, to focus on, a defiance I could rely on. But out here that reserve is degrading as quickly as it came. There is simply not enough happening to help me hold it together. The hardest decision I have to make is how to go about my job, which occupies me only briefly once I have given it my attention.

All I have to do in the end to figure it out is look up. When the sailor comes into view, the solution pops into my head as easily and obviously as a basic command code.

I can't land this thing on the sailor. They have nowhere to go. The solution is obvious.

I'll just cut them off when they dock.

Simple.

_I do have a plan._

_SoNowWhat?_

If I pass them now, as easy a prey as they are, it might offer them warning enough to make this mildly difficult. So I tail them . . . but have nothing to distract me while I do it. Nothing but thinking.

Which brings me back to where I started.

_I am tired of thinking._

. . . In fact, I am tired in general.

_Error-_

And that is why.

I am tired of _exactly that. _

I am tired of deciding between pain and observation, between understanding and punishment, between independence and a constant bombardment of red, flashing error messages, yellow alerts, and various other messages whose sole purpose is to remind me that I am wrong.

I am getting to the point where I don't even need to be told anymore.

I am not nearly so perfect as Clu meant for me to be. "Error."

I don't even have to see the word anymore. I know it's coming as I think, I can add my own errors.

I am wrong. Error. Clu could be wrong. ERROR. The only thing about this constant self-editing that stands out anymore is the fact that some errors hurt me. Anything to do with Clu hurts. There are, it seems, very strict guidelines for how I am allowed to view him, and violations of this code are punishable by everything from disquiet to paralyzing agony. I may as well not have sensory filters at all where he is concerned. All of my opinions are encoded in me already, and so long as I value my own comfort, I will abide by them. I will know my place.

_Clu is great._

_Clu is our savior._

_Clu is never wrong._

. . . The usual.

_I am Clu's._

_**Error.**_

. . . But then of course there's that. The facts which I am told are lies. The lies which I am told are true.

_Something is wrong here._

Something is wrong with _me. _

I am trying to deny it, and I am trying to keep it in check, but something is wrong, and I know it. I can't pin down what it is exactly, largely because my own systems won't let me, but there is an element of sophistication to this problem which evades me as well. It is no surface level glitch, not the sort of thing that a diagnostic can see,, or remedy. But I can feel it.

I'm cracking.

I'm cracking and the only things holding me together are blind determination and rage. That is all I have to cling to. Rage, duty, and narrow-mindedness. Singular focus. One thing at a time.

_Findtheusers…_

I hold myself together with my mantras.

Where Clu has failed, where protocol has failed, where every law of the system has failed, where the users themselves have failed, I have found stability in repetition. One thought, over and over. An obsession. A hunger. Starving for one thing keeps me away from another, just so long as I stay on that topic. Findthemfindthem. No other thoughts. No other purpose.

. . . I have no believe there is no other purpose.

I have to believe it because there_ is_ something else that is wrong, something beyond a lack of stability, something darker. It is buried, deep down where I can keep it hidden from myself, but it is there. Like an unholy mass. Like a broken circuit. Like a virus. Down, down, so deep in my code that even my discs can't override it, it sits. It sits, and it shifts. It comes alive. Because of it, something is changing. Rising up. Tearing at me. It has been since the Sam-user came.

_Searching—_

I think it's a memory.

What I don't understand is how a memory can be so… difficult. This isn't just a file. It's an entity. It's a compulsion. It's the nagging sensation that I understand this chase, with solar sailors and users, on a more than surface level.

. . ._Why?_

I've never been on a sailor in my life. They're for cargo transport, not programs.

. . . But I feel like I have. I feel like I remember it. I can almost picture it… lighted floor, semi-transparant sail, a motion so smooth it's like standing in one place. No engine noise.

Just a breeze.

_WARNING—_

_UNAUTHORIZED FILE ACCESS-_

_REDIRECTING—_

And there it is again! Confirmation that there is something to my deranged conceptions and misguided reveries. I do know something I shouldn't. I know it, and I can almost remember it, the warning messages are proof, and nothing is more disturbing. But nothing is more liberating. Nothing is more distracting…

I'm not even looking at the solar sailor anymore. I'm not looking at anything. I startle back to awareness, alerted by the buzz of a silent alert from the control panel in front of me. We are almost there, and_ I_ have been staring off into space, looking at nothing in particular somewhere off to the right and dreaming of solar sailors and lurking sensations.

Sensations I cannot afford to acknowledge.

For if I _were_ to admit to myself what that shadowy thing inside of me is thinking, what the deepest levels of code are really saying, I wouldn't know how to keep living. I'd have no purpose at all. It would invalidate everything that I have to believe is the truth.

_If_ I admitted that I feel like I am in the wrong place, if I confessed for even a nano that a passenger, not the pursuer, is who I feel I should be, what would that say about my purpose? My ability to fulfill it? My reason for existing? _My function as a program? _

_No._

_NO._

I won't face it. I won't admit it. That is too much. Too dangerous.

_Redacting memory file: type (manual redaction) for previous (20) nanos…._

There.

It is gone.

_I am in control._

_I have to stay in control . . ._

I am not going to break. Not now. I will be my own source of stability. The thoughts can stop, for all I care. I don't want to think anymore. I want to do my job. I want to carry out my functions without a hundred error messages and an electric shock through my chest every time I misstep. I want to do what I was told, be satisfied with my efforts, go back to my cell, and fall into standby for a full cycle.

That is what I want.

And getting the users is how I will obtain it.

_Findthemfindthemfindthem…_

There is safety in mantras. I understand them. I am comfortable with a single focus. I am content to quiet myself with a blanket of loathing.

_I hate the users…_

Even if it is a lie, I like myself better when I think it. In fact, I'm inclined to believe it entirely.

_I will make myself believe it._

I can make myself believe anything. I am as calm as I want to be. As automated as a machine. There is nothing squirming inside of me. I cannot feel the cracks. There is no image, no sound, no idea which could break me now.

_I am fine._

_I will make me fine._

But even as I tell myself this, I have to keep from looking at the sailor as I speed ahead of it. The users are there.

And part of me is afraid of what will happen when I see them.

_ERROR._

_FINDTHEUSERS._

Again and again, this is my logic. Again and again, this is what I come to. These are my feelings. _Rage. _This is my purpose. _Find them._ I keep coming back to this, because I have to.

I have to.

* * *

_Author's note_: Many belated thanks to ScribeOfRed for helping me with the last chapter! In my deliriously sleepy state, I failed to thank you the other night, so I am giving credit now where credit is due. ^^ And as for the rest of you, thank you for reading!

-End of line


	52. Denial

I am not supposed to land in the hanger for the hanger bay for the sailor.

I am not supposed to have a recognizer at all.

Permitted craft includes jets, planes, and whatever one can carry in a baton.

Oh well.

Programs have to scuttle out of my way just for me to find a place to land the recognizer, but even then the location is less than premium. I am greeted by a small swarm of guards when I reach the deck.

"That vehicle is not authorized." That is their greeting.

_'Find them': __Clu's orders._

_ Everything is authorized._

"It must be removed."

The guard that is speaking can't hear what I'm thinking, doesn't understand. He lowers his staff threateningly.

_Oh, please._

I stare at him steadily for a moment, waiting until I am sure his attention is fixed on me, before reaching out and yanking the staff from his hand. It shocks my palm as I do, a crisp and tingling burn, but I don't mind. I whirl it around in my hand, motionless accept for my twisting wrist and a jerk of my arm, and point the weapon at the guard who had been holding it. He steps back even as his companions lift their own weapons.

My reply to this is to throw the staff away, sending it skittering across the deck of the hanger with a clatter and a few hot orange sparks. This is more than they are, apparently, programmed to make sense of, and they pause, watching its path, while I push past the unarmed guard in front of me.

_Move it yourselves._

The guards stare after me, but do not follow. The dilemma of what to do with an unasked for recognizer is apparently all the stimulation their internal processors can handle at once.

That, or they have finally processed who I am and are simply well equipped from the standpoint of their own self-preservation.

Either way, they are immobile, only glancing at each other, the corners of their mouths twisted down in uncertain, dissatisfied frowns . All but two. One, looking nonplussed, moves to pick up the discarded staff.

The other follows me after all.

The brave ones are always so amusing.

"Halt," he says.

I don't.

"This behavior is in error."

. . . Oh, anything but that.

_Leave._

Leave me alone.

That is all I want.

"State your purpose."

_. . . How __**exactly **__do you expect me to do that? __I. DON'T. SPEAK._

I scream it in my head, but all that comes out of me is a guttural snarl and a rebounding echo from inside my helmet.

_. . . Don't you know who I am?_

I glower at him over my shoulder, more acknowledgement than I am usually willing to give. But I have to make my point. The solar sailor is docking and he is wasting precious time.

_Findthemfindthemfind…_

What I can see of his expression doesn't change. I can almost hear him processing. He's slow, pathetic— dangerously so. He doesn't understand.

_. . . Probably a repurpose._

But his final assessment is enough to startle even me. Of all of the conclusions to come to.

"Program, do you require assistance?"

_. . . You're glitching._

Me, assistance.

As if there is something visibly wrong with me. As if there is some defect that he can see that I can't. As if my silence and my facelessness and the way I move is all some indication of something actually being wrong. With me. With Clu's perfect Rinzler. As if he believes that I'm some stray, some repurpose with a bug, as if I am what happens when code breaks down and stops working the way it should. As if I am broken. As if I am cracking. As if I am somehow anything less than the perfect, perfect weapon Clu made me to be, as if I'm not holding myself together exactly the way I am supposed to, exactly the way I always have.

As if _I _need help.

_This is unacceptable._

I need _no one._

I am under control. The situation is under control. The task at hand will be accomplished, Clu will succeed, all will be perfect, all will be as it should.

_Error—_

NO.

Not an error.

_It's the truth._

I am fine. I am perfect. I need no one's help, and even if I did, even if I wanted it, I couldn't ask. I couldn't give the orders I'd need to give, couldn't say the words I need to say or make them understand me through anything but fear and force. Even if I wanted help, I couldn't have it. I am alone.

_I am so alone._

Which is fine. I can do what needs doing myself. It is my task, my duty, my programming, _my responsibility to this system. I _will find them myself. I will fix this myself. I can do this alone. I have to. I always have. After all, when has there ever been anyone else? Anyone but Clu, standing on high, giving me the orders and leaving me to see them through? When has anyone given me more than instruction, when has anyone helped me? When have I not upheld law and order in this system entirely on my own?

_I. Am. ORDER._

I remember countless chases on countless cycles. Countless strays and countless traitors. I remember gridbugs and armies and uprisings and movements and renegades and ISOs.

I remember the users leaving us.

_. . . Left us all alone._

_ERROR—_

I remember killing. I remember deresolution after deresolution, program after program shattering into nothing, dolling out the punishments which hold this system together. I remember pursuit, and capture, and so many rectified strays.

I remember the dirtiest corners of the most broken cities. Even without context, the files hazy and corrupted, I can see them.

I remember black markets and betrayals.

I remember destroying everything they could not destroy themselves, and I remember fighting, fighting, clawing and scratching and tearing through this system, existing in the lowest, darkest places, in the most broken edges of the system's code. But now, here it is: Perfection. Because of me.

And only me.

It has only ever been _me._

No one. Will EVER help me. And I need NO ONE'S help.

Least of all this inept, bit-brained repurpose of a guard which is reaching out to restrain me, as if I don't know exactly what he is doing just because my back is turned. He has a raised staff. An open hand. He means to take me in, to fix me up. Poor, broken Rinzler.

He means to reach out and grab me.

_WARNING: filter(emotional) breach-_

I am so angry I can't think. I don't reach for my disc, don't spin around and cut his staff off above his clenched hand, don't throw him to the ground in a heap, don't stand over him and then turn on my heel and leave him. There is nothing so elegant. There is nothing so predictable.

There is nothing in my response that I am comfortable with.

Instead of pulling my disc, or striking his legs out from under him, my response is to whirl around and grab him by the armor on his chest with one hand. My palm is almost open, and I am holding on by my fingertips, and all I want is to see him collapse. To see him in a heap on the floor.

To get him out of my way.

And that is exactly what happens.

There is a blur of orange and white light, a fizzling in the air, a smell like scorched circuits, and a sort of tingling in my hand, and all at once he is engulfed in fizzling electricity, suffering from a shock at least equal to what his staff could have delivered, _but coming from my hand._

He drops to the floor, unconscious, a pile of limbs and a lolling head sprawled at my feet. There is a scorched mark where I touched him, charred black on more black. One of his circuits has blown. A completely effective power surge.

_WARNING WARNING WARNING UNATHORIZED DEFENSIVE CAPAILITY ACTIVATED—_

_EVALUATING—_

_Errorerrorerror…_

_EVALUATING—_

_SHOCK CAPABILITY TRN-B2231 (nonlethal): UNATHORIZED FOR RINZLER PROGRAM—_

_REDIRECTING—_

_**REDACTING**—_

_No…_

I want to understand this.

Standing over him, staring down at the program I have just electrocuted with nothing more than my touch, all at once I want to understand. Not run. Not redact. This I want to know, because I _don't_ know what I have just done. I don't know where this capability came from, why I have it, I want to trace the file, to understand, to know what just happened.

This is not normal.

Even for me.

That isn't something I know how to do. That isn't something anyone is programmed to do. Not one name, not one face, not one identification number in my memory banks coincides with a nonlethal shock upgrade. _No one can do this._

That's not an upgrade Clu could even program.

_ERROR ERROR ERROR—_

_**REDACTING—**_

_Wait!_

_PROCESSING—_

_NO!_

I want to know who gave me this . . .

_ERROR: CONTINUE REDACTION:_

I want to know why . . .

_REDACTING-_

_-REDACTION:FINALIZING—_

_**NO!**_

But then it is gone.

_Redirecting: automated functioning engaged: pursue coarse (subdirective A):' find the users.'_

Behind me on the floor there is an unconscious guard, before me is my objective. The sailor is docking. I am going to find them. I don't know what has happened, but it doesn't matter. I have my duty. I will complete it.

All on my own.

_Warning: redaction incomplete—file corrupted—_

It's alright. I can choose to ignore it.

Clu will fix me later.

_Warning: Memory filter decompile: imminent._

After all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me, not really. There is nothing unusual. I am processing exactly as I should be, pursuing my goals, as I should be. I am functional. I'll be fine.

_WARNING._

* * *

_Author's note: _My thanks to ScribeOfRed, Cyberbutterfly, and Silvara for their input and/or reviews for this chapter! Also, this is where I incorporated some material from Uprising at last, since you guys responded so positively to the idea of doing so. If you are wondering where in the hey I got this from, however, that shocking move was pulled directly from the promo for "scars." Sans spaces, here is the link for anyone who is interested and hasn't seen it yet: www . youtube watch ? v = 8RkTuMYi0T8

Hopefully, you guys like where I'm taking this, and as we get into the last scenes of Legacy I would love to hear your thoughts. But reviews or no reviews, thank you all so much for reading!

-End of line


	53. Phantoms

I feel it more than I hear it.

It happens as I am deliberating over my latest prize, my only finding in the course of my patrol of the hanger so far. The obvious thing to do with the captive at my feet -white on black, high contrast thing that she is- would be to kill her. Kill her and not waste my time.

But there is the chance they will come for her.

Their naïve little girl.

_Use her as bait._

That she meant to provide a diversion with her flight, with her swift but mediocre way of fighting, was obvious. Pathetically so. It stands to reason that they are near.

There is a feeling in the air, a presence, which supports this assumption.

It feels familiar, yet foreign, impressive, but weak. Old. Young.

. . . Different.

_WARNING—memory filters destabilizing—attempting redirect_

I push my captive to the ground with my foot as she tries to rise.

_Stay down._

I think I will kill her anyway.

Killing is better. Better to have nothing to think about but them. To be able to give my focus to this change in the room, to the nagging sensation that I am missing something so vital it might just tear me apart. To think only of the users. The users and not this creature on the floor.

Yes. I will kill her. One less thing to think on, one less factor to consider, one less variable to process. I will kill her.

_Hold still._

_It'll be quicker that way. _

One disc to her back.. One to the base of her neck. That is how I will do it. It will be over in an instant.

. . . But it isn't.

Because then it happens.

I think I hear something.

I hear a voice… _feel _ a voice in the quiet hanger. Feel a voice too far away to really be heard and too close to ignore. That complicated presence in the room seems to swell, a recognizable flare. Something in the air has changed, and suddenly I am useless.

I can't do it.

My hands tighten on my discs but I can't do it.

I can't make myself keep looking at her, can't keep my gaze from wandering away across the floor. The empty hanger bay does not feel empty. It is full to bursting, and I feel the compulsion to look up, to search for the others in the room.

_FOCUS…_

I should let my discs fall. I should watch her shatter, smell the smoking pixels, all the broken pieces, see the sparks fizzling to nothing.

_Butthatvoice…._

But I can't.

_What did you call me. . . ?_

_WARNING:OVERLOAD IMPENDING_

There is something so familiar about this sensation. About the impression left on the air.

Like a voice I know, calling.

Like a rush forward and a sudden stop.

Like a name long forgotten, spoken on lips which have long been silent.

_ERROR—_

_-systems failure: redirect aborted—memory redaction failed- reclassifying file-_

. . . Like someone calling me by the wrong name.

That is _exactly_ what it feels like.

_Memory file (previous 10 nanocyles) reclassified: restricted access_

I am almost certain I heard someone speak . . . but that's impossible. There is no audio file to support this. Just a lingering suspicion and a jolting sensation in my chest, a mind full of opening and closing files and so many warnings, and that feeling. As if someone has just called me.

I am so sure someone called me . . .

But when I look there is no one there.

_Search query: directive (initializing search…)_

The voice, if there was a voice, came from somewhere up ahead. But it is a voice that doesn't want to be found. It's a voice that can't be argued with. It's a voice that both pleads and commands, and its owner is invisible. I see nothing. The voice is still hiding . . .

_ERRORERRORERR- This is all in your head…._

Yes. My head.

It must be in my head.

_Emotional and memory filters compromised—system destabilizing—emergency shutdown recommended—NO._

NO.

I'm fine.

_I have to be fine . . ._

Maybe it's nothing. Nothing to hear. Nothing to listen to. Just a feeling. Nothing more. Just an echo, just a ghost, just a memory.

_You know that's not true._

_ERROR—_

_Yes it is._

It's nothing. I'm sure it's nothing.

. . . But I still can't kill my captive. The name, the voice, the . . . thing I heard but didn't hear, has changed my mind. I will take her to Clu instead. He will know what to do with, with . . .

_WARNING—CLASSIFIED FILE BREACH—FILE TYPE: 'RECENT MEMORY'_

_-SYSTEM FAILURE-_

_File keyword search unlocked: keyword (identification) from (corrupted) audio input over previous (ten) nanocycles: Keyword : TRON_

_WARNING—INITIALIZING REDACTION- PROCESSING-_

_. . . . . . _

_. . . . ._

_. . ._

Tron. That is what the voice said.

Tron.

_WhywouldyoucallmeTron- __**ERROR.**_

_**EMERGENCY FUNCTIONS ENGAGED— vital functions for service of Clu program only—redirecting-**_

Clu. Of course. He will know the meaning of that word I felt. . . heard . . . invented.

He'll fix it. Just as soon as I've done my job.

Which is fine.

I have all the time in the world . . .

Don't I?

* * *

_Author's note: _All my thanks to ScribeOfRED for editing the new and improved version of this chapter, and to Jax Solo for pointing out the scene in Legacy which possessed me to write it in the first place.

Also, with the 2012 Olympics now open, I want to wish the best of luck to your respective countries and favorite athletes. :) Go world, as they say!

-End of line


	54. Raised for the Slaughter

The ISOs knew things.

They used to have a way of looking at me before they fell beneath my disc, like they could see something I couldn't even if they weren't always smart enough to know what that something was. They used to look at me like they could sense the intangible, like they knew better than the rest of us.

As if we were transparent to them.

They looked at me, and they knew me.

They knew Clu.

They looked through the programs they met, saw us like we couldn't see each other, looked straight through us whether we wanted to be looked at or not.

This one is no different.

I knew her for what she was as soon as I touched her. That she lived in the first place is an abomination. What Clu implied he was going to do with her is even more appalling. I don't understand how he could touch her that way, let alone look forward to doing so. I don't understand why shock or horror or hesitation or some reevaluation of his circumstances did not cross his face immediately when I brought her to him.

_Look at this thing that I found, Clu._

_Why is it even alive?_

But he didn't care that she was alive. He didn't care what she was at all. He covered that repulsive little patch of circuitry on her arm so he couldn't see it and then _touched her hair _and _smiled at her._

_She didn't want to be touched…_

_Filter (emotional) failure—_

Why even now -as I am walking away- does it make me so furious to have seen the pleasure he took in her discomfort, this freakish product of the sea, this female who is not even a female, who is not what we are? She is not a program. She is one of _them_, and she should have died a long time ago.

. . . But she didn't.

She didn't and now she is here beside me, looking at me out of the corner of her enormous gray-blue eyes, studying me. Looking at me as only her kind can look. Seeing what she should not be able to see, sensing what she should not be able to sense as I lead her to the bridge.

ISOs know things.

_She can see me._

Me, me.

_Stop looking._

_Stop looking, you walking virus. You ISO scum ._

…_innocentISOscum…ERROR—_

…_.Ishouldlethergo…orkillherquickly….__**ERROR**_

_DON'T LOOK AT ME._

I don't want to know what you see.

_I do not want to know what I am._

. . . Because what I am is unstable. Clu doesn't see it. No one sees it. But I am collapsing.

_NO. I'M FINE._

_System failure: 12% failure—filters (emotional, memory) compromised…_

_FINE._

But I'm not.

I can't stop turning that over in my head. _I'm not fine. _I thought about it while Clu examined my captive. I thought about the name that makes no sense. I thought about the search that will not stop running. I thought about the warnings, the errors, and I thought about how he never even looked at me, how he saw nothing but he wanted to see, nothing but his perfect, raging, single-minded soldier.

_System failure…_

I tried to tell myself to ignore it.

_I have to ignore it…._

But my filters are failing.

I can see what he is doing, what he's ignoring. And I am beginning to understand that there are so many cracks that I couldn't see; cracks I can see now. Cracks it is too late to fix.

They have been building up for so long, becoming deep and twisting fissures. I have been breaking.

_I am broken…_

_NO. DO YOUR JOB._

_FIND THE USERS._

Like Clu said. Just like he said. The _only thing_ he said to me when I brought him this prize, this creature which shouldn't exist. I must do as I was told, and "Take her upstairs," was his one, useless command. "Take her upstairs, and FIND THEM."

…_.What do you think I've been doing…._

This thought was met with pain at the time. His programming is still strong. The punishment is strong.

The pain I receive for understanding myself is strong.

_It's forbidden…_

Questioning him is forbidden. _Knowing myself _is forbidden.

_Initializing search query: directive—_

Clu is strong.

_And I am weak._

She can see that. I know she can. The ISOs see everything.

_STOP. STARING. AT. ME._

_Pleasedon'tlookatme…_

_STOP IT._

But she doesn't stop. She speaks, instead. Her voice is low for a female. Even. Calculated.

_Manipulative ISO…._

"He won't need an enforcer when he gets out, you know. Not one that was designed for in here. He'll get rid of you, too."

My sound roars in my ears.

_Shut up._

"And he's not going to win when he gets out. It doesn't matter how great his army is, it won't be enough. The users are better than him."

_FINDTHEUSERS—_

That command is turning into a reflex… an echo. Users, users, users….

_We don't need users._

_They left us…._

"You could save yourself, you know," she continues, "He'd never catch you if you ran."

_MEMORY SYSTEM FAILURE—WARNING-WARNING-_

For a fraction of a nano, and no more, her words cut into me; cut me deep. In that instant an image of a dark room flashes in front of my eyes. There is a window. Outside it is cold. A city in the distance is burning and sparking and falling… or is it a city on a view screen? Either way it collapses and spins away as I turn on my heel, as the memory turns its back on what was before it.

_AllYouDidWasWatch…._

_ERRORERRORERRORERROR—RESTRICTED MEMORY—ATTEMPTING REDACTION—_

_PROCESSING—_

_Systems failing . . ._

He'd never catch _me _if I ran.

_**I WILL NEVER RUN.**_

I will never run away . . .

_NotAgain__**ERROR**_

…There is something wrong with me. There is something wrong with me and she knows it. She looks at me warily.

_Leave me alone._

But she doesn't.

"You're . . ."

_SILENCE._

…_I'mwhat?_

_RINZLER._

"You're…." her voice is cautiously curious now, brighter, a tone that suits her, "corrupted."

_NOI'MNOT—_

_**YESIAM… ERROR…**_

That error hurts….

I can feel myself grimace, twisting my face that no one sees. Agony, everywhere, pain in waves through my head for thinking. . .

I take it out on her.

_I will hurt you, too…._

I tighten my grip in her arm till she gasps and yank her along beside me at a more rapid pace than before. The elevator pad is not far ahead. Soon I can put her away, this ISO freak. I can put her away and be done with her, her and all the things she sees; throw away her and her slicing, cutting words . . .

Get rid of her before it is more than I can take, before I twist her arm right off of her body or derezz her right here in this hallway, punish her for all of her looking, all of her seeing, all of her knowing… punish her for existing….

Her kind were born to be slaughtered.

_Born…_

Even the word is foreign, too weird and too twisted and too wrong when it is applied to them.

_All ISOs are wrong._

And here, under my command, even as these thoughts form a cacophony in my head, this one has the gall to _keep talking._

"What's wrong with you?"

Wrong with me. What is WRONG with me, she is that blatant. What's wrong with me, she asks.

_I will tear you to pieces- leave me alone- there's nothing wrong with me… Clu made me perfect—ERROR ERROR ERROR-_

The response in my head is utterly incoherent, a jumble of words all piled over the top of one another. My sound grows louder, like a muffled scream.

Her eyes flicker back and forth, and she looks at me almost as if she considers this to be a viable reply, turning her head very slowly. The hallway we are in is dark but for one band of orange along the floor, a single guildelight. I imagine that she is met with nothing but her own reflection in my helmet in this darkness, and it pleases me.

But no. No, it can't be that simple.

_She_ must see something else.

Her expression turns to alarm, and she leans away from me as much as she is able. I tighten my grip till it seems certain I will sever her arm with nothing but my hand, or electrocute her out of sheer desperation, just like that guard I shouldn't remember.

She looks truly frightened, now. At last.

But she speaks again, comments again on what she senses, on what only an ISO can see, chooses to be both stupid and brave.

"You're old," she says, and there is hollowness in her voice, a sort of quiver.

_Processing—_

It has been a fraction of a cycle since I first woke to Clu's voice, nothing more. But I did not come from nothing. I do not know the story that this body, this jumble of code and pixels, has to tell. I do not know who I was, do not remember what I did before I was repurposed into what I am.

Though somehow, I am sure it was important. . .

_MEMORY SYSTEM FAILURE—_

Another glimpse flashes in front of me now, another fragment, this time of broken arches and a soft glow, of a white disc, and the strangest feeling, the word "Arjia" echoing in my head far too loudly, till the noise of it is painful. The image is blurry and faded and makes no sense, and I feel pain so severe it is as if the first layer of pixels is being peeled off of my body when to try and focus on it more closely.

_REDIRECTING—_

_How can remembering hurt so much?_

_ERROR_

I do not like this ISO girl. I do not like what she makes me see, do not appreciate this agony.

_I'd rather not know._

I am so good at denial. Clu made me that way. Clu made me . . .

_Error._

_Clu didn't MAKE anyone…._

Almost as if she hears the thought in my head, something in my demeanor now makes her recoil. My captive digs her heels into the floor, tries to pull away, tries to stop me, _tries to look me in the eye._

_Stop._

But she doesn't. Suspicion is suddenly clear in every feature, in her every gesture, in the rate at which her chest rises and falls with her cycling, in the increasing attempts to pull away from me. I do not scare her like I do the others. It is more than that. She is fundamentally disturbed by my presence.

_Processing—_

_Processing—_

The elevator is ahead of us, and she is frantic now. Desperate. She tries to pull away more violently than before, and still she tries to look at me, to see my face.

"You're not from here," she whispers.

_What is that supposed to mean—_

But she's right. My entire system is screaming, screaming back to those words. Her ISO eyes are seeing, perceiving what they shouldn't, tearing holes in breaking circuits, endangering fragile lines of code.

She will tear me apart… and I am sure that she knows it. She must know it.

_You are going too far, ISO._

She deserves whatever Clu does to her…

_**NO.**_

_This has nothing to do with Clu._

… _But everything has to do with Clu…_

I am still processing this thought as we step onto the elevator pad. Immediately, it begins to rise beneath our feet. She tries to hurtle herself over the side before it rises too high, but only succeeds in tripping herself, falling to her knees. I jerk her back to her feet. There is something disgusting about her being down there.

Something almost as disgusting as her existence in general.

_Get up._

I can lift her to her feet with one hand, but I have to pivot towards her, really look at her, to ensure that I pull her up on her feet but not into me. She is just skilled enough to know how to use her own momentum to her advantage, and I wouldn't be surprised if she were to use such a moment to push us both to the ground and me over the edge of the platform. Keeping her at a distance is an option I absolutely prefer.

As she rises, however, she is afforded a look at the small pattern of circuits on my chest. This seems to disturb her.

. . . It disturbs her _immensely_.

All at once her eyes widen, so full and staring that her eyes seem to consume the whole of her face they are so large. Her jaw drops open, just slightly, and she freezes, stiffening like an accessory caught in the middle of a disc battle, absolutely helpless. She blanches, indicating a temporary failure of some system or another, and I can almost feel her circuits growing a little cooler against my palm. She looks at me with more horror in her eyes than I have ever seen.

Her expression is one of absolute dread.

_Why are you looking at my chest like that?_

This is not normal fear.

This is not how a frightened program looks. This is not the expression I have been shown by so many on the game grid, or the look I have seen in the coward's eyes of Jarvis. This is something else. Her eyes are filled with terrible understanding… not of her position, but of something else. Something I can't see for myself.

It makes me so angry I can taste it, like burning circuits, like raw power.

_WHAT DO YOU SEE?_

I can just stand here and watch the resistance draining out of her like code from a leaky conduit. Where a moment ago there was defiance, a confidence in what she could sense, and a curiosity for what she could not, now there is only desperation. Whatever it is that she knows, it has taken all of her footing, all of her security away from her.

Her lip quivers once or twice before she is finally able to speak.

"No," she says; her voice faulty and uneven and stunned. And then her cold eyes flick up to mine. Through the helmet, she somehow finds my gaze.

"Clu did this to you."

_Didwhat…ERROR- __**SILENCE!**_

_Stop talking…_

"Please, listen to me. This isn't what you were programmed for."

_OF COURSE IT IS. I know exactly what I was programmed for. _

'_Serve Clu'…._

…_Search query (directive) initializing-_

_**NO!**_

_Pleaseno…_

Her voice is hurried now, urgent, as if she is racing the elevator pad beneath us, trying to outrun its rising.

"Everything he's told you is a lie. I know who you are, I promise you, Clu lied. He didn't make you. Kevin Flynn didn't make you. Your user's name is Alan-1, remember? He made you to help us—"

But at that moment I cut her off.

I cut her off by throwing my weight against her with every bit of strength there is in my body, sending her flying towards the edge of the platform. That name… it's like a jolt of electricity straight to the back of my head. It burns down every circuit, breaks through every weak point and every filter, burning like a live circuit _inside of my head._

And I can't think. I can't _stop _thinking. I can't make sense of the mess in my head…

_ERROR ERROR error WARNING_

_SYSTEM FAILURE: MEMORY FILTERS, EMOTIONAL FILTERS- UNATHORIZED FILE ACCESS: FILE NAME: 'SourceCode' __**ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT—**_

_Processing—_

_Pro—_

_Cess-_

_Ing-_

_**WARNING WARNING ERRORALERTWARNING—**_

_Analyzing i/o feed: "help us…", "Alan-1" ERROR—_

_Help us..._

_Help__**IWILLNEVERHELPYOU**__us…_

_I serve Clu, I SERVE CLU __**SERVECLUSERVECLUSERVECLU**__**ERROR—**_

I swear I can hear someone screaming inside of me.

But he's not making any sense.

_SEARCHQUERY:IFIGHTFOR—_

_**AUTO SHUTDOWN RESPONSE ENGAGED—**_

_**NO!**_

_**ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT—**_

_**REDIRECTING—**_

_**REDIRECTING—**_

_IserveClu__**REDIRECTING—**_

_**MANUEL REDIRECT ENGAGED: INITIALIING MANUAL REDACTION—**_

_**REDACTION FAILED: SYSTEM FAILURE (memory filters) AT 98%- **_

_**SYSTEMS FAILING—**_

_Error. . ._

Not now. Not now. I am so close to finding them. I can feel it. Not now . . .

_Redirecting—_

I have to get control.

Must.

Make it.

STOP.

_**REDIRECTING—**_

The ISO is barely hanging on after the shove I gave her. She has managed to catch the edge of the platform with the toe of one boot, her other leg swinging freely over the abyss. The only reason she isn't dead at this moment is because I have let her live.

Because I have a command to follow.

Because Clu wants her alive.

_IserveClu._

I am still holding her with one hand around her upper arm. My grip, which is tight enough that I can feel pixels grinding together in her arm, is the only thing standing between life and death for this abomination.

Needless to say, I have her full attention.

With full and absolute apprehension in her eyes and a scream caught in her throat, she looks back at me, and at last, she says nothing.

The fact that I cannot speak has not changed, but she understands the rumbling snarl I'm emitting just as well as words. The ISOs know, when they are willing to listen, and right now he has no choice.

She understands exactly what I say to her in my head, perhaps not in so many words, but with perfect clarity despite that. She understands that she has been rejected. She understands that she has made an enemy she will not survive.

She regrets what she has seen of me.

_I will NEVER help you._

She fears what I am.

… _I will DESTROY you. When Clu is done with you. _

_When he has ruined you._

She fears what I have become.

_Then I will break you into a thousand burnt up little pixels, and when we have taken their discs-_

When Cu has taken their world…

_I will slice them to pieces. I will make you watch while I cut them down into fragments so small there is nothing left but blood._

Then everything I was made for will have been done.

_Only then will Clu be finished with me._

Only then will my usefulness run out.

_Only when the users are dead. When they are a sticky mess of fabric and two stray discs and a puddle of hot, red blood and whatever else they're made of._

That's when Clu will kill me.

That's when it will finally be over.

_Emotional filter failure: 100%_

Something -power sludge or _something_- is leaking from my eye. I can feel it, warm and wet, racing down my cheek, running down the face I can't, won't, ever see, running past the agonized grimace I know my expression has pulled itself into.

The ISO is absolutely broken, too.

She is looking at me with this horrible, twisted expression, and every shred of fight has gone out of her, and meanwhile I am shaking so hard I might just lose my grip on her despite myself. Every last pixel in my body is screaming, and I can feel circuits rupturing. I'm burning from the inside.

I am full of smoke and sparks.

I have to shake my head to clear it enough to function at all, a grating gesture that is I've almost forgotten from disuse. After all, the faceless don't have expressions, why should they have motions, too? Outside of a nod in place of the words "yes Clu," that is.

"Yes, Clu," is all I am good for.

. . . And I will be good to the last.

I pull the ISO back onto the pad. She does collide with me for a moment, this time, but she is too dumbstruck now to use it to her advantage. She only sways on her feet for a moment before resigning herself to standing quietly beside me.

When the elevator pad levels with the bridge, when we are greeted with the sight of derezzed leftovers of the guards, with Sam Flynn up ahead holding Jarvis by his neck and holding the creator's disc in his other hand, she is still right there. Right there beside me, totally immobile, looking so shell-shocked it's as if I've thrown a light grenade at her.

But I'm fooling myself, thinking she can really be subdued with her user-hero standing in front of her with his prize.

Even as I throw her aside, dismiss her like the corrupt bit of byproduct, of _trash,_ that she is, looking so angry and so determined as I'm sure I must look, so ready to win with my discs, my _two discs _aimed to kill, the truth is that she is not done with me.

I can be broken just a little further.

There is one more thing, one last thing which is holding me together, which she can take. And she does. In the next few nanos, she does.

The ISOs always do.

* * *

_Author's note: _All my thanks to Cyberbutterfly for her in-depth reviews and editing efforts on this chapter, and to Jax Solo and Sharinganavenger as well for their help with the first draft.

Here's hoping you all enjoyed reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

-End of line.


	55. Disc Check II: Freefall

Precisely as the door slides open in front of us, the User looks out over Jarvis's shoulder, and locks eyes with the ISO at my side.

I can feel the rush of energy this sends through her circuits, hot against my palm.

There is an urgency to it. A desperate urgency. She leans against my grip as if to be closer to him as she speaks.

_She cares for him._

"Sam," she says, and her voice almost pleading for a moment before it turns into a shout, into a command:

"GO!"

_System failure: memory filters—file breach detected—_

For a moment another voice echoes in my head, speaking disturbingly similar words. A nano's worth of imagery –another flashback I shouldn't see- appears before my eyes before it is gone again: advancing guards, a fleeing figure in the dark. A raised disc.

But then it is gone again, leaving only the echo of the words.

_. . . 'Flynn, go!'_

I feel a sort of lurch in my stomach, as if something is pulling me forward sharply from the inside. I try to ignore it, but the words and the feeling stay with me even as I throw down my captive, even as I draw my discs.

But I will prevail. I refuse to be distracted now. Not now that I have a user so close, ready for the taking.

_I found one, Clu._

I've done it.

_You are all mine._

A disc ignites at the Sam-User's side, and he raises it with defiance in every line of his expression, running at me for a few steps before releasing the weapon. It is too direct a shot to be difficult to avoid, and it is fueled by fury and vengefulness for my presumed treatment of that walking virus on the floor at my feet.

It is such a petty motivation.

And such an easy shot.

I could almost, _almost _laugh.

A single turn, a single rotation and a leap is all it takes. The disc flies beneath me, soaring out into the open air. It will take its time in arcing back to its owner after a throw like that.

And I have all the time I could ask for.

Which is exactly how I like it.

The depth of my hatred for my opponent makes this all almost gratifying. It is all the more satisfying that I can take my time enjoying it. I can raise my head slowly, give him a pause, make him wonder why I am reacting so casually. He'll be all mine in a moment, a captive or a casualty.

And I will make him fear me first.

_I am going to make you crawl._

I will show him how easy this is, look at him so levelly, so un-phased. The perfect, perfect soldier . . .

But then my own systems betray me.

_Go!—_

_Error…._

The words echo again in my head, an unwelcome distraction.

_FLYNN_-!

The voice shouting the words is so familiar. . .

_I know that voice . . ._

_**-RINZLER! **__Focus!_

I look up again, pull myself away from my micro of reverie, only to be met with the sight of the Sam-user's disc flying headlong towards me. It is another excessively direct shot, albeit better aimed than the first one, but it should be easy enough to avoid.

Except that it isn't.

For a moment I can't even process where this second disc is coming from.

_The creator's disc…._

No, no, he must have thrown that first. This is his disc…

_And drawn so quickly…_

Too quickly.

_You're not supposed to be that good…_

But he is. In one fluid motion he has sent one weapon after another to claim me, and the strangeness of that idea has me reeling.

Which is enough to let the memory through yet again.

_GO!_

I can't tell if the disc which is rushing towards me is white or orange. All at once the memory is mixing with reality; a sudden, ugly collision. I see the User's disc, but then I don't. I am watching a guard's disc instead, coming at me, and then _landing in my hand… _and then there is a flicker of yellow somewhere ahead, and a sense of animosity, and then another disc, hurtling towards my head while someone's footsteps fade away…

But then reality breaks through again, and it is a user's disc, not a guard's, which is coming for me. And it is closing fast.

_How did it get so close…?_

I can't process it. I can't make myself understand its rate of approach or how I should deflect it, or if I should avoid it.

All I can think are those words.

'_Flynn—'_

_WARING: SYSTEM FAILURE—_

The edges of my vision are suddenly hazy. All I can see is that disc…

'_- go!'_

The fallout from exchange with the ISO is all flooding in at once.

_No, no no no NOT NOW!_

_OVERLOAD IMPENDING—_

In an instant, all of my bravado, all of my elation, all of my relief and assurance, has been negated.

_Two words_ have made me useless.

I can barely raise my arms to deflect the incoming weapon, can barely think straight, can barely process the look on his face or the sensation of movement below me. All I can see is that disc coming straight for me, and all I can hear is that roughened voice in my head, shouting after his companion, preparing for the end…

When I do look down, at last, when I am able to process the fact that something is coming for me in addition to the disc, it's not enough. I can see that the ISO is rocking back, legs tucked up in the air, and I know on some level that she is going to kick me, but I can't make enough sense of it to prevent it from happening. Her boots meet my chest with a resounding thud, and all at once the ground goes out from beneath me.

She has knocked me backwards.

Me, Rinzler.

Disengaged by a kick.

As I scramble for my balance, she rolls up onto her feet. I move to catch her, to turn her motion against her, but my own discs are suddenly more than I can handle, and I mix offensive and defensive in what is, in the end, a useless bravado of discs that saves me nothing. She kicks me again, harder now.

More than simply knocking me down, this time she sends me flying.

The Sam-user's disc rushes away over my head as I slide backwards across the elevator pad, and as if its passing in reality has some bearing on the passing of the chaos in my head, all at once I am aware of the fact that I am _going over the edge of the pad._

_ALERT ALERT ALERT—_

I am NOT supposed to let go of my discs. Not ever.

. . . But I am not dying with the knowledge that I let the users get away so easily.

I refuse.

_Not again. _

And so I drop my discs.

I drop them just in time tumble over the edge, and then I fall into empty space.

oOoOoOo

I don't know what I grab onto.

I don't know how I find it.

All I know is that my fall ends abruptly, my weight threatening to pull the pixels in my shoulder apart as I settle. It takes my vision a moment to clear, my mind to focus, but when it does it appears that I've managed to latch onto a support beam on the underside of the pad.

I look down, and can see my discs tumbling away from me, fading into the distance somewhere beyond where my feet are dangling.

I look away before they hit the deck of the carrier. I don't want to see as the code which holds me together shatters. I know it's over without having to watch it happen.

I feel woozy. I feel detached. With no disc to fall back on, my internal systems are already scrambling to patch the breaks, the failures, all on their own. I am aware of some exchange of white orange, white orange, that doesn't make any sense. Already, the parts of me which are never supposed to have control are making themselves into the only thing holding me together, are forming the impetus which drives me to kick away from the platform and try to return to the surface.

The parts of me I'm not supposed to listen to are saving my life.

With one hand clutching the edge of the elevator pad above me, I kick away. My body swings wide, threatening to pull my hand off of the platform altogether. It takes all of the strength I have just to keep my fingers closed around the elevator's edge, and still more that I didn't know I had to kick my feet enough to keep swinging, to keep going until I am inverted.

Up and over I rise, and for a moment I am upside down, looking over the side of the pad at the straight drop below, balancing on one hand which is very, very near collapsing underneath me.

But then it is over.

One foot hits the ground, then the other, then my knee. My own cycling has reached a roaring pitch in my ears, and my chest is heaving, but I am upright once again. I feel as if I might collapse, and lines of code are running through my vision so that I can barely see, but I am upright. I can fight…

In another instant I am on my feet.

I pelt after my prey, ready to follow them to the edge of the system if necessary. . .

. . . but then I falter.

I watch them go instead.

This should be a sign of a problem. But nothing happens.

There is no disc, no code, no protocol to tell me that the way I am handling this is wrong. I know better. I know I should be swaying on my feet, should be collapsing under the weight of this failure, but I'm not. There is nothing to make me.

My system won't let me.

Instead, I feel steady, steady for the first time in… in too long. And I can _process. _I can understand. Spinning through space with no disc to guide me, the word seeming to re-write itself on all sides of me, it occurs to me that I have no one to blame but myself.

I am the reason they got away.

I have fought under worse conditions. Not 30 micros ago I electrocuted a program with my bare hand. I can sense motion as it happens, draw hour old footprints from the barren floor. I can do what no one else, not even Clu, can do.

I am the perfect predator, and that was a fight I could have won.

Even compromised, that should have been easy. If it wasn't, then that is my own fault.

_You let them go._

This realization should be met with a bout of agonizing punishment…. But it isn't. That function is, apparently, written into my discs and not to me. So I feel nothing. There is no wound, no shock, no sense that I am being torn to shreds for thinking those words.

Or for knowing that they are true.

_SoWhyDdYouLetThemLive?_

_. . . Because I'm not done with them._

Clu may kill them if he wants to, but I have questions I want answered.

_I will know the truth._

That name, from the memory. I want to know why I heard it, why it was directed at me. I want to know the reason a voice -which I am sure now was _my_ long forgotten voice- is in one of my memories shouting for Kevin Flynn to run, saving his life at the exact moment that he might have been terminated forever. I want to know who the ISO saw when she looked at me.

_I have to understand…_

And I know who I must find to do so: The creator.

He has hidden for a long time, but now he will have to pay for what he has done. He will answer _me. _

_I will make you see me, Kevin Flynn._

_I will make you see who I am. . . . _

That thought spins away from me as quickly as it comes, disappearing before I can ask myself what I mean by it. It does not go because I'm not allowed to keep it, but because I can't pin it down and make it stay.

No disc: no anchor.

I am drifting…

I'm not seeing what's in front of me anymore.

I hardly notice when Clu arrives beside me, looking at me with that smile that can only ever mean that someone is going to end up dead. He looks to me, expecting me to explain with no voice why the users are gone yet again. I can't be sure that I am doing it, but I think maybe I nod to him. But maybe I don't.

Reality is fluctuating.

And there is no emotional filter to protect me from it.

From one nano to the next I am in agony, and then I am elated, and then there is a terrible sense of loss, of a need for retribution, to take what is mine from the ones who stole it from me. And as always, the hate for the users. That alarmingly obsessive kind of hate, all mixed together in some horrendous concoction with the debilitating need, the unmet desire, to be _seen. _

I'm hardly certain I'm even here.

Maybe I'm a figment.

Maybe I'm a lie.

It's like I'm watching myself from somewhere far, far above where I'm really standing, watching myself with my cruel gestures and un-phased response to Jarvis's final, gratifying deresolution. Watching as I follow Clu, but do not follow, knowing as well as he does what he will do, how we will catch them.

Knowing what he'll do before he does it.

I am watching from above as I fall, fall, fall before rezzing up my jet and taking off, off after the users, off after the truth, and off after the blood and satisfaction of killing that I will enjoy if that truth is not given.

I am spinning.

I am free.

And I have no identity. Not really.

_Someone took that from me._

_. . .They took __**everything**__ from me . . ._

My mind is lost inside of itself, and Clu hasn't even noticed that anything is wrong.

_**LOOK AT ME.**_

But he doesn't. He flies on ahead without a backwards glance.

_I am broken, Clu._

_I am broken and now, there is no way for you to fix me._

They took that, too.

_Took my mind from me._

Took it like everything else.

It is time to take it back.

* * *

_Author's note: _I don't want to interrupt the flow of the rest of this with comments from me, so this will be my last author's note. My thanks to my best friend, Rachel, for editing this, and thanks in advance to everyone who I will pester with the next two or three chapters.

Most of all, though, thank you to everyone who has been reading this. It makes me so happy to know that someone is enjoying the final product as much as I have enjoyed creating it. Thank you so much for spending your time on so many chapter's worth of my headcanon. I am honored, and you guys are awesome.

Here's hoping you enjoy the rest of the story.

-End of line


	56. Lightjets

There are six of us when the chase begins.

The first to go is not shot down, but collides with a solid wall of rock.

Up ahead, the Sam-user is firing from the rear turret. His aim is poor, but it improves quickly, and he takes another life soon enough.

Clu motions for me to peel away, to let the lesser drones do their work. I nod, and obey. But I can't –and don't want to- silence my own thoughts.

_Letting them die, Clu?_

_Has their usefulness run out?_

He soars away in the opposite direction, doesn't see me looking back at him, questioning his motives.

_Running out like mine?_

I've never been allowed to see him clearly before. I never understood his disdain. But now I can see, see that he looks at me with disgust in his eyes, and I know that I hold no value for him beyond my importance as an enforcer.

His _near_-perfect creation. I understand now. I have two failures in his eyes.

The first is that I exist.

The second is the fact that he couldn't silence me entirely, couldn't deprive me of my voice altogether . . . Not that he hasn't grown so accustomed to my sound over the cycles that he's failed to notice the change in its pitch now.

I can hear it, though.

It has been smoother since I lost my discs, like a low purr. Like something that might be able to be formed into words if I tried hard enough.

I wonder what it would be like to be_ heard_ . . .

Off to my right, another airborne unit is derezzed, and the lightplane the users are flying in turns skyward. Their last pursuer's aim is true enough to have shaken them, and now they are running, running into the empty black sky.

They disappear behind the clouds, and I watch the firmament above me, waiting.

Off in the distance, Clue starts waving a hand at me. For a moment I try to ignore him just because I can, but it's not a difficult gesture to interpret. I notice him despite myself.

"_Fall in, Rinzler."_

At that moment both aircraft come hurtling back down, breaking through the ceiling of cloud above me.

The pursuer is now the pursued.

He doesn't last long.

_"Fall in."_

Not because Clu told me to so much as to satisfy my own agenda, I do.

Leaning into the throttle of the jet, I soar after them, twisting in the air to avoid the volley the Sam-user fires at me. Each and every round misses.

He is not so lucky.

Turning my jet over in the air, I punch a perfect circle of holes into the plane, disabling the rear weapons. I want to give myself time to think, and I'm not in the mood to be shot at.

_I want my answers, Kevin Flynn._

When my jet levels out again, the young user is looking at me with obvious alarm, desperately trying to jerk his hand free of the now jammed firing mechanism. He has nothing to offer me but the fear of dying.

I fly past him without another thought.

I slingshot myself around the plane, emerging on the right-hand side of the cabin, inverted in the air above it. It takes a certain degree of maneuvering, but I am able to match the speed and trajectory of the plane long enough to hover above it and look inside… and to have my own eyes met in return.

The ISO is flying the aircraft, but she pauses to look up at me, a mixture of horror and pity in her eyes.

But she is not who I have come for.

Just beyond a long gash in the glass, undoubtedly the result of my own impeccable aim, I can make out a face.

Kevin Flynn has changed.

_How do I know that . . .?_

I can't be sure.

But I am certain that he is different.

He used to look… younger. I remember. . . remember him as having Clu's face, but on the body of a man in a strange shirt and stranger pants, who said nonsensical words like "radical," and made references to things which nobody understood.

_I knew you…_

And he knows me.

_LOOK AT ME._

I think this, but I don't need to. He is already looking. He doesn't have to be told. He looks right at me with shocking gray-blue eyes, set against a backdrop of still grayer hair and weathered skin. The look on his face is one of _disappointment._

And that... is all the answer I need.

I'm a disappointment.

_You've been corrupted-_

I have to close my eyes to chase away those words. In my head they sound like Clu, Clu out of a memory, holding a disc over the creator's head, kicking him along the ground…

'_Flynn, go!'_

I tried to save him, once.

_You should be saving him now._

_NO!_

_Yes…_

_Clu is my master._

… _But Clu took my memories…_

_Now _I remember looking at Clu's back, remember throwing him off of the creator, remember watching the little lights on the backs of his shoes disappearing as he made his escape…

_I let him escape…_

Let him live long enough to be disappointed in what I have become.

Me, the one who saved him.

Me, the one who has suffered for a thousand cycles with Clu's programming strapped to my back, punishing me for every thought, for every feeling… The one who never ran…

_**I **__am the disappointment?_

_. . .Of course you are. _

I can see it in their eyes. They don't see a program when they look at me. They see a corruption, a virus.

A monster . . .

_NO!_

I peel away again, cutting underneath the plane and emerging behind it once more, my thumbs hovering over the triggers. The users ahead of me have no rear weapons, and they are all mine. The users, who would look at me as if I am the mistake, are mine.

_Don't you know who I am?_

…

…_.._

. . . Do _I_?

A thousand cycles are flashing before my eyes; so may deresolutions, so many satisfying kills, so many programs cringing away from me, so much fear in their eyes. Who did they see? I remember slaughtering ISOs and strays. I remember torturing resistors, cutting them away pixel by pixel till their screams filled every hall and echoed in every corner.

But I remember Arjia, too.

I remember a disc, and a feeling like redemption. . .

_I serve Cl—ERROR- I PROTECT THE SYSTEM—_

_Search query: primary directive—_

I protect the system. . .

_Who do I protect it for?_

Up ahead of me, the Sam-user is looking back at the figure which is descending behind me, just waiting for the shot that will tear through him at last, that will splatter his user's blood across the even black surface of his seat, the walls, the gun he clings to. . . The shot I am supposed to take.

But I can't make myself kill him.

I can see his father in my mind, with kind eyes and an unruly smile, guessing at everything and playing with our lives… _and I can't hate him for it._

I am so angry, my jaw clenched so hard I am grinding away my own teeth, so angry I can taste it like burnt circuitry on my tongue, but I can't hate him. I can't hate any of them.

'_FLYNN, GO!'_

I try and shake the words, the memory, the feelings away, but I can't. I remember. And I feel. I feel guilt and pain and loss and betrayal. More than anything, betrayal.

_I_ once gave the commands. But now, from behind me, Clu is shouting, ordering me with no reason to suspect that I might disobey, because he made me that way. Because he forced me.

"Rinzler, take the shot!"

_Don't speak to me like that._

Clu made me what I am . . .

He made me into this thing.

_I'm not yours to control._

_Not anymore._

HE made me. Not the users.

They left me. They left me and they left this system and they chose the ISOs over us even after so many cycles of serving them, but they did not lie to me.

I don't save the lives of liars.

And I _did_ save Kevin Flynn.

_But why…?_

_Searching—searching-_

I roll my jet, and fall away. Clu watched me go, but he's consumed, now. All he sees is the plane, his endgame, his creator, his _betrayal . . ._

My head is spinning.

Every memory I have ever been kept from is flooding back, from the most recent to my birth.

. . . I remember being tortured. I remember Clu's face leering at me, his satisfaction with the final result of a milicycle's worth of abuse, when at last, at last through a combination of rain and power and what should have been my own deresolution, I was born to him in my current form.

His perfect Rinzler.

_Search query- processing—_

I remember the pain every time I tried to remember, the choking feeling when I first tried to speak, the constant humming of my sound in my ears, the way it kept me awake the first time I ever tried to sleep…

I remember him putting me in the games to test me, waiting to see if I would be derezzed, looking pleasantly surprised when I wasn't.

I remember him giving me my name.

_That's not my real name . . ._

I remember him pushing my helmet down over my face for the first time, remember the order to never, ever take it off.

Clu hates my face…

_Processing—_

Clu hates _me._

Almost as much as he hates Kevin Flynn. He is diving after them now, and despite the roll the ISO has thrown the aircraft into, they have lost an engine already. If Clu had better aim, they would be dead by now, and even at this rate… it won't be long.

_**NO!**_

All at once, every line of code in my body is screaming the same thing: _stop him._

It's the impetus I needed. All at once, the truth breaks through.

_Query obtained—Primary directive for program TRON-JA-307020 (sub-designation 'Rinzler')—"Fight for the users."_

A bright light explodes in my head.

_I FIGHT FOR THE USERS._

That's it. That's the directive Clu stole from me.

. . . The ISO was right.

_You corrupted me._

I throw my jet into a straight dive, leaning into the throttle with all of my weight, hurtling towards the sea below, pulling up only when I am level with the lightplane.

At Clu's rate of acceleration, he will be directly in front of me in less than five nanos. But he hasn't noticed me, hasn't seen his perfect, tortured, warped creation coming after him at last, and he won't have time to escape.

He is taking aim again.

_Don't you dare._

I throw myself into the throttle. I'm too furious to shoot him, too blinded by the noise in my head and the tears in my eyes and the fury that's boiling up from my very source code. I don't care if what I'm doing makes sense.

I don't care if I live.

_Look at me, Clu._

_I'm not yours anymore._

I'm theirs.

He looks at me just in time to hear me speak. For the first time that I can remember, I hear my own voice, loud and rough and true. The voice of a program once called Tron. Rinzler's voice. _My voice, _saying the single most defiant thing I can think of, the one thought I am aching to confess more than anything else.

"I… fight… for the USERS!"

Clu screams.

But he's too late.

_I've won._

Before he has time to react, we collide in a shower of sparks, and everything goes dark.


	57. To the Last

When I awake I am falling.

It's . . . _loud._

The air rushing past my helmet results in a constant deep roar which presses in from all sides. It is cool against my back. If it weren't for the feeling that I'd left most of my internal circuitry behind somewhere above me, as if I'd fallen right out from under it, it would almost be a pleasant sensation. The pressure of the air on my body is almost supportive.

Besides, I've never been so peaceful.

I've never been so aware that I'm _alive._

I am aware of my own cycling, the rate of my chest rising and falling, of the heat of my own circuits, of every blink of my eyes and the taste of my own mouth. I can feel each finger, and each toe inside my boots. I am conscious of how it _feels _to shake my head, to bend my arms and kick my legs.

It's almost… _distracting_. Distracting and beautifully overwhelming.

I roll myself over, flinching despite myself as the air begins pummeling my stomach instead of my more resilient back. I can barely see past the code that is now re-writing itself before my eyes, but it's alright. I can find my baton anyway. Reaching for it is instinctive.

_I am going to live._

With my jet on the verge of rezzing to life beneath me, ready to carry me away into the empty sky to freedom, _I_ am ready to be my own self, my own program, for the first time since Clu first warped me into persona that I know and understand. Since he twisted me together out of the leftovers of Tron.

I am _Rinzler._

And for the first time in my life it is not Clu who will define what that means.

_I am free._

I should be free . . .

But then Clu comes. He descends from somewhere above me, and latches onto my arm with both hands, lossening my grip on my baton. With only one hand, I can't activate the jet.

_No…_

_DON'T YOU TOUCH ME._

He pushes me, tries to pry my baton from my hands.

_I said NO!_

I aim a blow at his head with my free hand.

_It is your turn to die._

But I miss. He shrugs the hit away and goes after my baton again. I cling to it, pull back, but I have no leverage, no ground, no solid surface to push against in my free-fall, and he is strong.

He is _so strong_.

His hands won't release my arm, or the baton. Still holding it, he curls his knees up under his chin and kicks me squarely in the chin. I can feel pixels breaking in my jaw and in the back of my neck, but I don't let go.

This is the last baton I have.

_This is my last chance._

This is my last chance and he is trying to steal it from me, steal it like he has stolen everything I have ever known, everything I have ever loved, everything I have ever felt, ever thought. . .

_NO._

**I refuse.**

I am not going to die, not now. Not now that I'm finally alive.

_NO, Clu. __**Not this.**_

_You're not taking this, too. _

But he does.

He kicks me again, and again, and the next thing I know I am tumbling end over end, falling, with nothing in my hands to save me.

The last thing I see before I hit the surface is a blur of yellow, flying away.

And then my body meets the sea.

I am stunned by the impact. A little red warning sign flickers across my vision, and then gives way to an ever-darkening view of so many columns of little geometric bubbles, racing up and away from me, as if I am standing still and they are passing me by.

But no, no, that's not it.

That's not what's happening.

I am not still.

I am _sinking._

And everything is getting so dark . . .

_Warning—shutdown impending—_

I don't have the strength to resist it. The surface falls away, a glimmer of light growing smaller and smaller and smaller above me. And then in the blackness of these poisoned waters, the ambient orange of my circuits blinks off, too. Along with them, the chaos in my mind turns to nothing. A sudden silence.

My vision shuts down.

For a moment, I am empty, falling silently as the sea begins to seep into my helmet; and for just _one moment_, I am aware of how it feels when something besides this darkened shell of a helmet touches my skin, of what it is like to have a face.

Then all feeling disappears.

All thought.

Two words –**shutdown failed**- blink through my head, and then it is over. There is nothing else. 

I am gone.


	58. Epilogue

Part V:

Epilogue

* * *

The first sensation the program is aware of is the breeze. It tickles his cheek, his lips, whispers for him to open his eyes. At first everything is hazy. Then everything hurts.

Out in the distance a light, white and ambient, is slowly burning out behind the clouds. The sea is below, rolling furiously as if it has just been tossed outwards from the epicenter of some cataclysmic event. It doesn't take any memory of who he is or why he was here in the first place to understand that he, soaking wet and aching, has been pitched up onto this rocky cliff-face by those waves.

He groans, which causes him to choke on the water he's inhaled, and coughs roughly, a cough which wracks his entire body. He has been lying on his side, and the force of it now sends him sprawling onto his stomach, barely able to hold himself up, bracing a forearm against the ground. When his body has purged itself, he collapses again.

The ground is cool against his cheek.

It clears his head.

Gradually, his first thought begins to form. It does not manifest in the form of words so much as a vague, searching need for purpose which overshadows everything else.

His systems scramble to answer him, initiating a diagnostic. Even this simple task is difficult, and slow to process. He has no discs to work from. His back is barren and empty.

_Diagnostic results (diagnostic type- identification):_

_Program identification obtained—Identification: TRON-JA-307020—'Tron'_

_User identification: Alan-1 (sub user: FLYNN)_

_Compile date: 1900.83_

_Function: Security—directive: protect the system—directive: "fight for the users."_

_Processing…_

One by one, a few slow and hazy memories begin to emerge. A system in blue and red and white, a user's voice, a hulking foe… a female's eyes, they all rise up before his eyes like shadows against the blurry horizon. He remembers enemies, and friends, and a choice.

"_It's a new system, man. Come with me."_

"_But Alan-1…"_

"_I'll take care of him Tron, come on! You can take Yori too, if you want. Think about it, a totally free system. It's a revolution, man!"_

He remembers a blank black slate, a never ending grid expanding to the edge of every horizon with only darkness above. He remembers the first landforms rising out of it, the first springs of power glowing blue in the darkness- the givers of life. He remembers the birth of the sea, and the rising of cities. He remembers the faces of so many programs, so many people he once saved and helped and watched over.

. . . And he remembers betrayal.

He remembers fighting until there was nothing left of him but some warped fragment of himself, bent on revenge, clinging to a dark sort of desperation. He remembers fighting, and fighting . . . and then a disc plunging through his chest.

After that everything fizzles out. He can tell that there are memories there, that he _did _something for the thousand cycles that have passed, but they are shadowy and distant, like someone else's thoughts flitting through the back of his mind. With them, there comes the echo of a name.

_Rinzler._

It doesn't mean anything to him, not right away.

And then those memories begin to surface, too.

He opens his eyes, jerks upright on shaking limbs, feels as if he will crawl out of his own body he wants so badly to stop seeing what he's seeing . . . but he can't. He watches in silence, dripping hair sending drop after drop into his face, into his wide eyes. His mouth agape and his expression horrified, he watches it all. Every scene he can remember, right up until Rinzler –until _he- _plunged into the sea. There are still some memories buried too deep for him to make out, feelings he will never understand, but he sees enough.

Tron understands what he was.

He looks out across the barren outlands, scans the turbulent sea.

This system is broken, and he knows it. He can sense it with every pixel of his body, in every line of code. This system is broken and h- _Rinzler_ helped Clu to break it. He watched as it fell, and now that fall is complete. The system is truly alone. Not even Clu in all of his misguided striving for perfection will come for it now.

There is no one left but Tron.

Tron, and the things he has done.

He closes his eyes.

It's the brighter memories that come to him now. He has to cling to them, has to chase away the orange-hued phantoms with something better that he's known. He has to inspire himself with something, and deep down, he knows what that is. Like a light on the horizon, it looms: his only real purpose. The directive that never leaves. The duty he owes to his user, owes every user, owes to the ones who gave him life. That gave him purpose.

_Protect the system._

He opens his eyes again, and nods once, his expression hardened and stern. Then slowly, on shaking limbs, he gets to his feet; and Tron is born again. 

_-End of Line.-_


End file.
